Too dense to comprehend—or perfectly packed? the divergent effects of propositional density on levels of text memory

Harrag, Chaimae; Sabil, Abdelkader; Radvansky, Gabriel A.; Conceição, Manuel Célio

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/27131

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Authors

Harrag, Chaimae

Sabil, Abdelkader

Radvansky, Gabriel A.

Conceição, Manuel Célio

Abstract(s)

Propositional density, a semantic index, calculates the number of idea units within a sentence. While research has shown that propositional density can influence comprehension, its effects on different levels of memory representation, namely, the surface form, textbase, and situation model, remain unexplored. The current study examined how varying levels of propositional density of the context on which target sentences were embedded affected memory at these different levels of representation. A sample of 120 native English speakers read historical texts with either low or high propositional density and then completed recognition tasks targeting each level. Our results indicated that lower propositional density improved memory for the surface form, while higher density enhanced memory for the textbase. Propositional density had no meaningful effect on the situation model level. These findings suggest a complex relationship between propositional density and memory: Higher density appears to impair memory at the surface form level but may create a desirable difficulty to strengthen memory at the textbase level. However, comprehension, as reflected by the situation model level, remains largely unaffected, suggesting that global comprehension relies more on coherence-building and prior knowledge integration than on local semantic density. These findings inform models of discourse processing and have implications for text design, instructional strategies, and cognitive load management in reading comprehension.