title: [The processing unit and story structure in memory for story].
abstract: To investigate story memory, three experiments were conducted. In Experiment I, 60 professional school students were asked to sort the sentences of stories into groups. Hierarchical clustering analysis was used to generate perceived story structure. Results indicated generally a good agreement between perceived structure and the structure induced by story grammar. In Experiment II and III, 72 university students and 72 professional school students learned three stories and were tested in recognition task. In the course of presenting the sentences in story, pauses were inserted between story clusters (BP) or within them (WP) (Experiment II). In BP condition, recognition time (RT) was faster than in WP condition. In Experiment III questions were inserted at the same points as in Experiment II (BQ, WP). In BQ condition RT was faster than in BP condition. These results indicated that pause or question inserted at the boundary of story cluster facilitated story processing and that question was more effective than pause. Story was processed in unit corresponding to perceived story structure.
authors.affiliation: Kawamura Gakuen Woman's University, Chiba.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kawasaki
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008091:Literature; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D013029:Space-Time Clustering; D013997:Time Factors