La formación de los ambientólogos

For Paivio (1990, 2006), “human cognition is unique in that it has become specialized for dealing simultaneously with language and with nonverbal objects and events” (p. 53). Ontologically speaking, he advocates that human beings specialized in the maintenance and manipulation of nonlinguistic representations in memory prior to developing the same ability in relation to linguistic representations. Still according to him, it is the contact that human beings have with concrete objects in the world since birth that justifies such an earlier development. In addition, Paivio (1990) states that the richer these experiences, the better the posterior development of language, once more interconnections would be established in the brain. Interconnections that would lead future readers to develop the ability to verbalize ideas related to concrete objects even in their absence, as well as the ability to elaborate on abstract ideas. In this sense, it is plausible to assert that, according to this framework, the VSSP would come into play much earlier in people’s lives since the maintenance and manipulation of visual representations are assumed to precede the maintenance and manipulation of verbal representations in WM.

The aforementioned arguments gave raise to Pavio’s DCT, whose main assumption, as shown in Figure 10, is that there are two distinct but interconnected subsystems responsible for the processing of information in general: the verbal system and the imagery system.

As suggested by their denominations, the first is pointed out as being responsible for the processing of verbal language memory traces, namely logogens, whereas the second, for the processing of nonverbal objects and events memory traces, namely imagens.

The functioning of these two distinct systems, as alleged in this framework, is independent from each other, that is, one can be active without the other. In the meantime, the framework also proposes that they are interconnected in the sense that one can trigger activity in the other and then activate parallel processing.

Paivio (2006) mentions the solving of jigsaw puzzles and crosswords to instantiate that. In jigsaw puzzles, for example, the imagery system appears to come into play more predominantly. In spite of that, I see that self reflections such as this piece does not fit here or these colored pieces have to be grouped later on are verbalizations that also guide one’s execution of the task. In relation to the second example, verbal representations originated from the processing of sequences of letters, syllables and finally, full words predominate in the execution of the task. However, I also see that individuals are at the same time aided by hints given by the number and position of empty squares of the crossword, which are in fact visual hints.

It is possible to speculate here that the CE of Baddeley’s model would be the subsystem responsible for the execution of these

Figure 10 – Paivio’s model of dual-coding information processing in memory.

Figure 10. The Dual Coding System Diagram. Sadoski, M. & Paivio, A. (2004, p.15).

interconnections, considering its assumed function of binding multidimensional information held by the EB (Baddeley, 2010). Besides that, it is also possible to say that the DCT is also in agreement with the Interactive Reading Model (Rumelhart, 1977), since it advocates for the parallel processing of more than one source of information in the construction of meanings. The sequential processing of words in the verbal system would be closely related to bottom-up processes while the generation of inferences triggered by illustrations, to top down processes, both of them, promoting the dual coding of information that is believed to improve recall and reading comprehension.

As pointed out by Paivio, “the most direct evidence of such interactive processing are the acts of reference—for example, naming objects and pointing to named objects” (p. 62). Based on Paivio’s claim that “what is processed in the imagery system is more likely to be evoked and used with objects or pictures as stimuli than with words as stimuli” (p.68), it can be asserted that illustrations, as the ones analyzed in this study may serve as external stimuli that can help one to better recall and understand verbal information. That is, external multimodal stimuli are believed to strengthen the input coding in memory, thus facilitating their recall and promoting the construction of more detailed mental representations.

However, it is important to acknowledge that the degree of transparency that exists between the verbal and pictorial information presented in the text, which is the key factor observed in this study, might facilitate or hamper the dual-coding process. That is, the more an illustration overlaps with the written text it accompanies, the more probable the establishment of associations between them, the faster their parallel processing and the more probable their contributions to promote successful recall and reading comprehension. On the other hand, it seems that the more subtle their overlapping, the higher the need for inferences from the part of reader, the slower their parallel processing, and the less probable their straightforward contributions to recall and reading comprehension. Thus, the DCT is being included in this theoretical framework because it brings clear explanations on what may happen during the processing of verbal and pictorial information and the effects of dual-coding in recall and reading comprehension. More importantly, it may ground the formulation of pedagogical instructions that can aid teachers to help readers deepen their comprehension of more elaborate illustrated texts in EFL reading, such as the ones investigated in this study. Finally, before closing this chapter, I want to emphasize on a term that appeared often in the body of the text up to now, and that seems to

more completely integrate the various frameworks previously presented. The word I am referring to is interaction. In sum, the main idea that all frameworks, even in different ways seem to share, is that from the very first moment readers put their eyes on a text, complex interactive processes involved in the maintenance and manipulation of various sources of information have to start being simultaneously executed within a cognitive system of limited capacity. As posed by Daneman and Carpenter (1980) and Just and Carpenter (1992), possible differences in the output these readers might present in terms of recall and comprehension tend to be closely related to two factors: individual differences in terms of reading proficiency and WMC. Thus, the controlling idea that guides this study is that readers depend on the two aforementioned factors to break the barriers imposed by the metaphors so commonly presented in cartoons in order to construct more appropriate meanings. And, more importantly, to break those barriers, readers depend on the automatization of low-level reading processes, so that more cognitive resources can be devoted to the generation of the necessary inferences that are believed to successfully integrate multimodal memory traces (logogens and imagens).

Having dealt with the Review of the Literature, in the following chapter I shall describe the method developed to meet the purposes of this study.

3 METHOD

The main objective of this study was to investigate whether a sample of high school students who differed in a measure of EFL reading proficiency and in a measure of working memory capacity (WMC) would present corresponding differences in their ability to construct meanings from elaborate illustrated texts. That is, those illustrated texts whose images are needed for inferential comprehension to take place. More precisely, the study investigated the existence of possible relationships among readers’ ability to infer meaning from cartoons, their EFL reading proficiency, and their capacity to simultaneously maintain and process verbal and pictorial information in WM.

This chapter is organized in 8 sections and provides details about the method adopted to carry out the study. Section 3.1 presents its design. Section 3.2 describes the participants’ profile. Section 3.3 provides details about the instruments used for data collection. Section 3.4 describes the procedures used for data collection. Section 3.5 presents information about the procedures used for data analysis. Finally, section 3.6 provides details about the pilot study conducted prior to the actual study.