Sentence Processing in Education

Cohesion and Coherence in Reading

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2025.1.47991

Keywords:

psycholinguistics, reading, cohesion, coherence, Basic Education

Abstract

Reading competence fundamentally requires mastery of the micro- and macro-structural properties of the language. This study investigated the influence of cohesion and coherence factors on the reading processing of individuals with distinct levels of education (i.e., students from Basic Education and Higher Education). Two self-paced reading experiments were conducted, manipulating syntactic parallelism and semantic-pragmatic inferences. The hypothesis was that less skilled readers would be more affected by structural violations, while more experienced readers would suffer losses when faced with conceptual nexus incongruities. This study aims to contribute to narrowing the dialogue between language science research and basic education, providing data that should be considered in developing educational practices to teach reading and writing.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Sabrina Lopes dos Santos , Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Brazil.

Holds a doctorate and master's degree from the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics at UFRJ (CNPq scholarship recipient). Bachelor's degree in Letters (Portuguese-French), also from UFRJ. She is a research member of the Laboratory of Experimental Psycholinguistics (LAPEX/UFRJ). Currently, she is undertaking postdoctoral research with a FAPERJ Nota 10 scholarship in the PPG-Linguistics program at UFRJ, focusing on inference processing in reading. Areas of interest: educational (psycho)linguistics; reading processing; syntax-pragmatics interface; participatory teaching-learning methodologies; data analysis.

Marcus Antonio Maia, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Brazil.

Holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California – USC (1994). Completed postdoctoral research in Language Processing as a visiting researcher at the City University of New York – CUNY (2003-2004). Currently a Full Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Coordinator of the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics between 2010 and 2015. Represented the Center for Letters and Arts of UFRJ on the Higher Council for Postgraduate Studies (CEPG/UFRJ) for two terms, between 2009 and 2015. Holds a Research Productivity Fellowship, level 1A (CNPq/2024-2029), and was a Scientist of Our State (FAPERJ) for the three-year period 2015-2018. Works in the areas of Psycholinguistics, Linguistic Theory and Analysis, and Brazilian Indigenous Languages, developing research and supervising projects on syntactic and lexical processing, experimental syntax, grammar theory, psycholinguistics and education, and Brazilian indigenous languages.

References

ABREU, K.; GARCIA, D.; SANTOS, S. Leiturabilidade e experiência leitora: a complexidade sintática em evidência. Cuadernos de la ALFAL, [s. l.], v. 16, n. 2, p. 65-81, 2024.

ABREU, K.; LIMA, V. A leiturabilidade no Ensino Fundamental e no Superior. In: MAIA, M. (org.). Psicolinguística: Diversidades, interfaces e aplicações. São Paulo: Contexto, 2022. p. 109-127.

BEAUGRANDE, R.; DRESSLER, W. Introduction to text linguistics. London: Longman, 1981.

CANESTRELLI, A. R.; MAK, W. M.; SANDERS, T. J. M. Causal connectives in discourse processing: How differences in subjectivity are reflected in eye movements. Language and Cognitive Processes, [s. l.], v. 28, n. 9, p. 1394-1413, 2013.

COHEN, J.; MACWHINNEY; B.; FLATT; M.; Provost. PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, [s. l.], n. 25, p. 257-271, 1993.

EVANS, J. S. B. T.; STANOVICH, K. E. Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, [s. l.], v. 8, n. 3, p. 223-241, 2013.

FRAZIER, L; CLIFTON, C. Construal. [S. l.]: Mit Press, 1996.

FRAZIER, L.; FODOR, J. D. The Sausage Machine: A new two-stage parsing model. Cognition, [s. l.], v. 6, p. 291-326, 1978.

KINTSCH, W. Revisiting the construction-integration model of text comprehension ans its implications for instruction. In: ALVERMANN, D. E. et al. (ed.). Theoretical models and processes of literacy. [S. l.: s. n.], 2019. p. 179-203.

KINTSCH, W. The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: a construction-integration model. Psychological Review, [s. l.], v. 95, n. 2, p. 163, 1988.

KLEIMAN, A. Oficina de Leitura: Teoria e Prática. 15. ed. Campinas: Pontes, 2013.

KOCH, I. A Coesão Textual. 12. ed. São Paulo: Contexto, 1989.

LEITÃO, M. Psicolinguística experimental: focalizando o processamento da linguagem. Manual de Linguística. São Paulo: Contexto, 2008. p. 217-234.

MAIA, M. (org.). Psicolinguística e educação. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2018. p. 103-132.

MAIA, M. (org.). Psicolinguística e Metacognição na Escola. Campinas: Mercado das Letras, 2019.

MARCUSCHI, L. A. Produção Textual, Análise de Gêneros e Compreensão. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.

NOORDMAN, L. G. M.; VONK, W. Inferences in discourse, psychology of. In: INTERNATIONAL Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 2. ed. v. 12. [S. l.]: Elsevier, 2015. p. 37-44.

OECD. Pisa 2022 results (Volume I): The state of learning and equity in education. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1787/53f23881-en.

OLIVEIRA, G. A coesão e a coerência textuais: o plano de texto da notícia “Fragmento de asteroide entrou na atmosfera terrestre junto à fronteira de Barrancos”. Revista (Con)Textos Linguísticos, [s. l.], v. 18, n. 39, p. 276-291, 2024.

PERFETTI, C. A.; HART, L. The lexical quality hypothesis. In: VERHOEVEN, L.; ELBRO, C.; REITSMA, P. (ed.). Precursors of functional literacy. [S. l.: s. n.], 2002. p. 189-213.

PERFETTI, C.; STAFURA, J. Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, [s. l.], v. 18, n. 1, p. 22-37, 2014.

PICKERING, M. J.; FERREIRA, V. S. Structural Priming: A Critical Review. Psychological Bulletin, [s. l.], v. 134, n. 3, p. 427-459, 2008.

RIBEIRO, S. B. An Experimental Study on Complex Sentences with Before and After. Associação de Linguística e Filologia da América Latina–Alfal, [s. l.], p. 134, 2022.

RICHARDS, J.; PLATT, J.; PLATT, H. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Essex: Longman, 1992.

SANTOS, S. Processamento de Inferências de Causa na Leitura de Sentenças. Revista Prolíngua, [s. l.], v. 15, n. 2, p. 164-182, 2020.

SINGER, M.; BROOKE, L. Inference and reasoning in discourse comprehension. Cognitive Pragmatics, [s. l.], p. 85-120, 2012.

SMITH, K. H.; MCMAHON, L. E. Understanding order information in sentences: Some recent work at Bell Laboratories. [S. l.: s. n.], 1970.

STUKKER, N.; SANDERS, T. Subjectivity and prototype structure in causal connectives: A cross- linguistic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, [s. l.], v. 44, n. 2, p. 169-190, 2011.

TODIRASCU-COURTIER, A.; FRANÇOIS, T.; BERNHARD, D., GALA, N.; LIGOZAT, A. Are Cohesive Features Relevant for Text Readability Evaluation? International Conference on Computational Linguistics, [s. l.], 2016.

TRAXLER, M. J.; SANFORD, A. J.; AKED, J. P.; MOXEY, L. M. Processing causal and diagnostic statements in discourse. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, [s. l.], v. 23, n. 1, p. 88-101, 1997.

Downloads

Published

2025-12-19

How to Cite

Lopes dos Santos , S., & Maia, M. A. (2025). Sentence Processing in Education: Cohesion and Coherence in Reading. Letrônica, 18(1), e47991. https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2025.1.47991

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2025): Single Volume - Continuous flow

Section

THE DEVELOPMENT OF (A)TYPICAL READING AND WRITING IN MONOLINGUISTIC AND BILINGUAL PEOPLE IN THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Sabrina Lopes dos Santos , Marcus Antonio Maia

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.