Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of the number of coreferential ties, types of topical progression, and thematic coherence on recall of short discourses. In Experiment I, the dis­courses with greater number of coreferential ties were recalled better. When the type of topical progression were varied in two types; the linearly progressing type was recalled better if the number of core­ferential ties were not explicitly controlled (Experiment II), while the hierachically evolving type was recalled better if the number of coreferential ties were controlled equal across the types (Experiment III). Experiment II also showed that the discourses with greater thematic coherence were recalled better. The results were interpreted as showing that coherence is the key determinant of discourse compre­hension and memory