THE ROLE OF FRAME AND SETTING INFORMATIONS ON COMPREHENSION AND MEMORY OF A STORY
1980 Volume 28 Issue 3 Pages 239-245
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1980 Volume 28 Issue 3 Pages 239-245
We assume that the levels of subject's comprehension and memory for some story are determined at least in part by the levels of “story schema” formed in his knowledge structure. The aim of this study was to determine whether Frame and Setting informations functioned as a general cognitive framework during comprehending and remembering some story. At this point, Frame information was an advanced information giving the subject a frame of developing a story. Setting information was usually contained in a story and such information that introduced a character of a hero or heroine and a scene or background of the development of a story.
As material, Hans Christan Andersen's “A girl who stepped on a loaf of bread” by TV media was used. Eighty second-grade children were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups: As an advanced information, FS group received both Frame and Setting informations prior to studying the story, F group received only Frame information, S group only Setting information, and the fourth (control) group received neither Frame nor Setting information. The experiment consisted of four parts:(a) a frame-formation session,(b) story seeing session,(c) an immediate tests ession, in which subjects recognized simple factual questions about each passage and answered passage contents for detailed questions, and (d) a delay comprehension test (one week later) using both questions.
Main results were as follows:
(1) The comprehension scores of S group (Setting-information) were not superior to those of control group.
(2) The comprehension scores of F group (Frame-information) were in accord with those of control group.
(3) The interaction of conditions between structures of story was significant, indicating the comprehension scores of FS group for the beginning and conclusion were superior to those of both S and control groups, but the comprehension scores of four groups in other parts of story did not differ from each other.
From these results, it was suggested that if the frame and setting informations were simultaneously given to the subjects prior to studying the story, they acted sufficiently as a cognitive framework during comprehending and remembering the story.
