Discovering a Valid Behavioral Evaluation of Discourse Gist Reasoning Skills in Adults

August 13, 2014

Dorothy MacFarlane, Alison Perez, Sandra B. Chapman

Cognitive function overview

Lorenz, J. et al, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, 2002

Discourse gist reasoning

Chapman, S. B., & Mudar, R. A., 2013

The Evaluated Discourse Gist Reasoning Skillset

Gist reasoning entails 3 higher order cognitive functions

• strategic attention

• integrated reasoning

• elaborated reasoning or innovation

Equation Representation: a + b = Ø

Literary Abstraction Rubric

Did They State…ScoreExampleSourceA Definition of Success/Failure (with no "?" after)1 Each"Success cannot be measured at times by money or someone else's definition." AND "To try nothing might actually be the definition of failure."BH0049Was He a Success/Failure (and why, if relevant)1 Each"He was a failure because of his ethics and moral attitude." AND

Literature Evaluation

Future Directions: Why is a Behavioral Method Needed?

- Established a Possible Control Group

- Troubleshooting

- Baseline for Future Standardized Testing

CitationsAnand, R., Chapman, S. B., Rackley, A., Keebler, M., Zientz, J., & Hart, J. (2011). Gist reasoning training in cognitively normal

seniors. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 26(9), 961-968.

Chapman SB, Zientz J, Weiner M, et al. (2002) Discourse changes in early Alzheimer’s disease,

mild cognitive impairment, and normal aging. Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders

16(3): 177–186.

Chapman, S. B., & Mudar, R. A. (2013). Discourse gist: A window into the brain’s complex cognitive capacity. Discourse Studies, 15(5), 519-533.

Chapman, S. B., Aslan, S., Spence, J. S., Hart, J. J., Bartz, E. K., Didehbani, N., ... & Lu, H. (2013). Neural mechanisms of brain plasticity with complex cognitive training in healthy seniors. Cerebral Cortex, bht234.

Johnson-Laird PN (1983) Mental Models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lorenz, J., Minoshima, S., & Casey, K. L. (2003). Keeping pain out of mind: the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in pain modulation. Brain, 126(5), 1079-1091.

McLeod, S. A. (2007). Cognitive Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html

van Dijk TA and Kintsch W (1983) Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York:

Academic Press.

van Dijk TA (1995) On macrostructure mental models and other inventions: A brief personal history of the Kintsch–van Dijk Theory. In: Weaver CA, Mannes S and Fletcher CR (eds)

Discourse Comprehension. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 383–410.

Zwaan RA and Radvansky GA (1998) Situation models in language comprehension and memory.

Psychology Bulletin 123(2): 162–185.