Instructional Science 9 (1980) 43 66 © Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands

P S Y C H O L O G I C A L

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P R O C E S S E S BEHIND THE C O M P R E H E N S I O N O F A P O E T I C T E X T

JOSEPH SHIMRON

University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel

ABSTRACT

In addition to the psychological operations which are typical of the reading processes of most regular texts, such as recall of memory schemes, developing hypotheses and tests of relevance, 1 suggest that in the reading of poetic texts there would be at least two additional kinds of processes; namely the process by which the reader discovers analogies, and compares them, and the process of drawing conclusions from this comparison. The predisposition of a poetry reader is characterized by (a) the tendency to process a maximum of information from memory schemes that are evoked during reading; and (b) the reader's readiness to process information expressed similarly to metaphors. That is, to process pieces of information whose meanings would not be considered consistent if taken literally.

Poetry has suffered too much already from those who are merely looking for something to investigate and those who wish to exercise some cherished theory. The best among the experimentalists and the analysts will agree over this.

But the remedy of putting the clock back is impracticable. Inquiry cannot be stopped now. The only possible course is to hasten, so faras we can, the development of a psychology which will ignore none of the facts and yet demolish none of the values that human experience has shown to be necessary. An account of poetry will be a pivotal point in such a psychology.

I .A. Richards

Introduction

Is it p o s s i b l e to d e s c r i b e t h e p s y c h o l o g i c a l p r o c e s s e s o f r e a d i n g a n d

c o m p r e h e n d i n g a p o e t i c t e x t ? T h e f o l l o w i n g w o r k is i n t e n d e d to s h o w t h a t

c o n c e p t i o n s a n d t h e o r i e s d e v e l o p e d in p s y c h o l o g y in t he l a s t t w e n t y y e a r s ,

p a r t i c u l a r l y in t he a r e a o f c o g n i t i v e p s y c h o l o g y , ge t us c l o s e r to a s i t u a t i o n

w h e r e th i s q u e s t i o n c a n be a n s w e r e d in t he a f f i r m a t i v e .

T h e m a j o r s o u r c e o f d i f f i c u l t y in u n d e r s t a n d i n g r e a d i n g c o m p r e h e n s i o n

p r o c e s s e s is t h a t r e a d i n g o c c u r s v e r y fas t . O n e r e a d s a s e n t e n c e o r a p a r a -

g r a p h , a n d e v e n b e f o r e o n e h a s f i n i s h e d it, t he m e a n i n g s e e m s q u i t e o b v i o u s .

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The speed of reading and of comprehension makes it difficult for the psy- chologist to investigate this complex activity and to isolate its basic elements.

To overcome this problem, some psychologists have attempted to force the reader to slow down his cognitive processes so that they can observe more clearly what occurs at each moment of reading. For example, Kolers (1973) presented his subjects with a text in which the letters were typed in various directions, i.e., as in mirror-writing. Then he examined their grammatical mistakes. In this way, Kolers slowed down the reading process and thus he was able to learn about some reading strategies his readers used, strategies that were more difficult to observe during a regular uninterrupted reading. Another approach to advance the investigation of reading processes was to design a process model of a reader. Since nobody knows exactly what is going on inside the brain at the time of reading, it seems a legitimate avenue of research to conjecture a possible model. Going in this way, it was hoped, the psychologist might gain some understanding about the objective require- ments of a reading mechanism. It needs to be emphasized that at this stage of the investigation the definitions of reading operatives which will be dealt with further are not sufficiently specific and precise. The advantage of using them in my opinion, is mainly conceptual; they enable psychologists to talk more or less meaningfully about internal reading processes.

This work follows the two approaches mentioned above. In the experi- ment which will be described later, an at tempt was made to slow down the reading process and to observe the comprehension of the text at each given moment , during the reading of the entire text. In addition, a model of poetry reading is suggested and tried [1].

The specific contribution of this work is in the at tempt to find out how far a model of reading a regular text can go to explain processes involved in reading poetry. In other words, what must be added to the reading model of a regular text so that it can be used to describe the reading of poetry? Extensions of present reading models seem essential, particularly in order to explain the fact, well-known to students of literature, that a string of words or sentences, if given in a poetic text, causes more intensive and sometimes different kinds of information-processing compared with a situation where these words or sentences are given in a more regular, nonpoetic text.

Quite briefly, I intend to forward two possible explanations for this. The first has to do with the special sources of meaning derived from a poetic text. I shall point to the psychological implications of the fact that the meaning of poetry is not only derived f rom the words and sentences themselves, but also f rom the structure of the text.

Secondly I suggest that reading poetry is a qualitatively unique kind of reading. There are differences between reading prose, reading a newspaper and reading poetry with regard to their purpose; and, since reading is cer- tainly a purposeful activity, this, it seems to me, determines a different psy-

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chological disposition. A person who reads poetry, for example, looks for symbolic meanings and makes special attempts to understand words or strings of words that are not clear at first glance, and which would be considered nonsensical in a non-poetic text.

What has been said here is not new for students of literature and is usually taken for granted. My at tempt here is to raise the question about the psycho- logical processes that can account for it.

It seems that the definition of schema as the basic memory unit has contributed to the conceptualization of the subject. Right now, the concept of memory schema is used to describe several things, such as sensorimotor operations, e.g., grasping or sucking in infant behavior (Piaget), a unit of meanings which together describe a concept such as a chair, or a lion (Bobrow and Norman, 1975), or an algorithmic unit which is part of a strategy of a problem-solving procedure (Moore and Newell, 1974). [2].

What all these "schemata" have in common is that they appear as wholes; walking, for example, is taken as a coordinated whole rather than an arbitrary combinat ion of body movementsl Similarly, in a concept such as table, several meanings or pieces of information are tied into a whole which can be unders tood as a prototype of a table. In this unit, there are pieces of information which describe how a table is perceived by our senses, as well as the semantic relations this concept has to other concepts in memory, relationships which are at the same time paradigmatic, describing the concept within a system of concepts ("a table is a piece of furniture"), and syntagmatic, describing the various functions of the concept (eating, doing homework, etc.). The various aspects of meanings tied in a schema can be unders tood as variables. For example, in the concept "student," these variables would be: young person, enrolled in a university, sitting in lectures, producing papers, etc. In real-life situations, these variables are converted by a specific description, so that the student, Jane or John, will be a person of a certain age enrolled in a certain university, sitting in certain lectures and preparing papers on certain subjects. The number of variables is not finite. It is possible to add variables to the student schema, but there is a group of variables whose existence in the schema is more probable or necessary than others. For example, there may be additional variables to the student schema, such as "visiting students' club," although the occurrence of such variables in memory schemas may not be very high. This attribute is not very critical in the "student" schema (of., Norman and Rumelhart , 1975).

It is here that some comprehension processes can already be demon- strated . For example, the reservation in the sentence "Sarah is a student, even though she is a grandmother ," can be comprehended because the infor- mation within the student schema in our memory, implies that the average age of a student is, say, in his twenties. Such an argument does not easily apply to grandmothers. In the processing of information, the specific charac-

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teristics of Sarah are compared to the information described by the schema variables, and a difference is noted; consequently, we understand that Sarah is an exceptional student because of her age.

The conception of memory as organized in schemas is also useful in explaining cognitive operations of thinking such as inference(s). Consider this example: if we are told that someone went to a restaurant and left his wallet behind, we know (understand) that sooner or later he will be in trouble. How do we know it? Part of the information tied in the "restaurant" schema in our memory determines that one who eats in a restaurant is required to pay for his meal. This information is placed in the schema "res- taurant" besides other pieces of information such as the regular appearance of a restaurant as a place in which there are tables and chairs, or the proce- dure of ordering meals. The knowledge of the schema as a whole unit enables us to feel gaps and to anticipate events in cases when the information given is incomplete (Burner, 1957).

This is an example of drawing an inference. The basic idea, again, is that since the schema "acts" as a whole unit, when one part of the schema is recalled, the other parts arise automatically. Thus, one cannot recall "wallet" without thinking about money or the place of the wallet in a purse or pocket. This is why "I've forgotten my wallet" usually means "I've no money on me," even though it has not been said.

Further, organization of our knowledge into schemas is flexible enough to allow thinking operations such as generalization and differentiation. The first is a process by which one schema is divided into two or more sub-sche- mas, and the second would be the opposite process. For example: in one situation we can see a Chinese restaurant as being different from an Italian restaurant (differentiation); but in another we can see them both as restau- rants (generalization). This is so because a schema can be further divided if necessary, and sub-schemas can be tied into a more general one, which still maintains the original information as defined in the previously different schemas.

The organization of memory schemas is not static, of course. Modifica- tions of schemas are brought about by the admission of new information which is incompatible with the old, and which requires reorganization of the memory units. This is what Piaget meant by "equilibrium" through "assimi- lation" and "accommodat ion."

Moreover, memory schemas are by no means a full inventory of our full sensory-experience. When one recalls the concept "dog", one does not neces- sarily recall all those events in which dogs were encountered. It is more likely that what one has in mind is a stereotyped kind of a dog. Bransford and Franks (1976) suggested that with time, material in our memory undergoes a process of decontextualization by which particular memories are detached from their specific contexts; and what is left in our memory is a bundle of abstract features of the concept.

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Finally, one can compare cognitive operations organized in schemas with scientific thinking. The schema reflects a certain reality by explaining and describing that reality. As such it is similar to a theory. If the relationship between the schema and reality is unsatisfactory, when the description given in the schema is not complete or is wrong, then there is a need to substitute the schema with a newer, more satisfactory one. It sometimes happens that at a certain moment there is no possible way to represent reality completely by using the existing schemas in the memory. In such cases, until a new schema is created by reorganization of the old ones, this to-be-comprehended reality is, in fact, partially comprehended. It is perhaps similar to a state of affairs in science, when the theories available can only partly account for the phe- nomenon in question.

This paper thus goes along with the assumption that comprehension depends on our ability to relate the organization of schemas in our memory to the phenomenon to be understood. In many eases we find a correspon- dence very quickly, because the phenomenon is already well-represented in our memory. In other cases, comprehension is reached only after some reor- ganization, disjunction or conjunction of schemas as described above. Com- prehension is increased when the correspondence between reality and memory schemas is greater. Comprehension is decreased when this corre- spondence is lessened; i.e., when more and more aspects of the phenomenon are inconsistent with what we already know, with what is presently fixed in our memory schemas.

My first assumption is that the comprehension of a poetic text is closely related to the processes of comprehending a regular text. I do not mean here to ignore the unique character of poetry and I will have more to say about it later. However, many of the things that make poetry unique exist in different degrees in texts which are not recognized as poetry. Moreover, almost every form of writing which is not traditionally recognized as poetry finds its way sooner or later into poetic texts. Finally, poetry is a text. Therefore, basic processes of reading comprehension apply to poetry just as much as they apply to any other text.

There is no agreement among reading experts on a single model which describes comprehension of texts. Differences of opinion focus mainly on the order of the processes. One conception suggests that comprehension processes occur serially - letter by letter, word by word, in the same order that they are put on paper. No general meaning can thus be made clear until the entire reading has been completed.

A second conception asserts that in the first stages of reading the reader gets from the text only parts of the information available and uses them as hints by which he guesses the following issues of the text. When the reading is continued, the reader again does not re-process all the information. Instead, he looks for those pieces of information by which he can either

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confirm or reject his earlier assumptions. And again he forms new expecta- tions. The process repeats itself in such a way that reading the last part of the text is nothing but a confirmation of already developed meanings consoli- dated during the reading process.

A good illustration of the first concept is the reading comprehension model of Gough (1972). In this model, reading comprehension is achieved via the operation of several mechanisms organized serially, from the one dealing with visual information in an iconic memory to the comprehensive mecha- nisms that make use of syntactic and semantic rules, and is responsible for the comprehension of the complete message.

Rumelhart (1975) found this model psychologically improbable. He claimed that there is ample evidence to show that the processing of informa- tion at each stage does not depend only on earlier processing, but also requires information derived from later processing.

Miller (1976) offered an entirely different model of reading. There are three stages in this model, but it is already in the first one that an attempt is made to identify important themes of the text. The at tention-mechanism directs the reader's attention towards relevant information which is tied to the main theme. For example, if the text deals with history, attention will be directed to details like dates and events. But if it deals with a literary text such as a novel, attention will be directed to interpersonal relationships.

After the main themes have been tentatively identified, the relevant information about these themes is tied in from our previous knowledge in our memory. Only then is comprehension of the text achieved.

Note that in large parts of Miller's model the order of processes is practically a reversal of that in Gough's model. Whereas in Gough's model comprehension proceeds letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence, in Miller's model the reader begins by identifying the major themes of the text and this directs him in further comprehension of the text. Knowing the theme, the reader is prevented from making incorrect assumptions and is directed to the appropriate context. If one considers the organization of information in a text as built in a hierarchy, where letters and words are at the base of the hierarchy, and the final meaning of the text is at the top, it can be seen that while in Gough's model the direction of information-processing is from the bot tom and up, in various stages of Miller's model the direction is f rom the top and down.

One should remember, however, that this distinction also depens on the particular nature of the text. Some texts define their themes immediately from the start, whereby a top-down processing is facilitated. In other texts the reader is presented with many details before he can see their meanings in a more general context. Consider the following example from a poem by Tan Pai (1975):

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Cry of a baby And laugh of a song Is the essence of all, Is the end of creation.

In this piece of poetry the ideas are organized according to the bot tom- up principle. If organized according to the top-down principle, it would look differently:

The end of creation And the essence of all Is the laugh of a song And the cry of a baby.

The difference between the two versions is not just in the order of the lines, of course, but in the direction of the comprehension-processing. In the first version the reader does not know what the text is all about until he reads the last line. In the second version, he knows from the first line what the topic of the text will be, so that a top-down process can be conducted.

STAGES IN COMPREHENDING POETIC TEXTS

In this section are listed what I consider to be the major processes of poetry comprehension. I am not sure about the right order of these processes, and assume that some of them occur simultaneously. Nevertheless, I shall try to keep some logical order of processes, starting with recall of schemas from memory, continuing with the formation of an ideational framework and ending with cognitive operations, such as drawing inferences. Some of these processes obviously characterize comprehension of all kinds of regular texts. Others are more typical of the comprehension of poetic texts.

A. Recall of Schemas from Memory

In the first stage words or word combinat ions in the poem evoke the memory schemas to which they are tied by association. These schemas are then brought to consciousness or to what psychologists term: "working memory."

B. Hypotheses Concerning Major Themes in the Text

Following Miller (1976), I assume that the reader attempts to identify major themes of the text at a very early stage of his reading. The hypotheses (s)he forms direct the associative recall of other information and provide criteria for a test of relevance - the next operation.

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C. Test of Relevance

In order to comprehend a particular poem the reader needs only part of the information which is associated with the words of the poem. Thus, there is a need to determine which pieces of information given in the schemas are relevant to the themes assumed at the second operation, and which must be rejected as irrelevant. The basic assumption is, that for the reader to gain an understanding, the internal representation of the poem must reach some degree of continuity and consistency; the various pieces of information must be interrelated or overlap (Kintsch, 1975), so that every single item becomes meaningful via its relationships with other pieces of information. Those items whose connections to the conceptual framework are not clear are determined as irrelevant, and are no longer processed.

D. Integration

The relevant parts of information are now integrated to create a concep- tual framework of the poem. This conceptual framework serves as a "super- schema" formed ad hoc for comprehending a particular text. It is comprised of two kinds of associations: associations within schema parts, and associa- tions between schemas.

E. Discovery of Parallel Structures

During reading, analogies or similar structures are readily noticed. In the poem to be discussed below, two families are mentioned, one of which is taken to a concentration camp; the other is that of Adam and Eve. The reader is intrigued by this parallel and is led to compare them.

I believe that reader's sensitivity to parallel structures of ideas is some- how similar to the sensitivity most readers and listeners have for repetitions of rhetoric expressions or even rhythm verses or rhymes.

F. Comparisons

If parallel schemas are noticed, a comparison takes place. An attempt is made to define the correspondence between parallel parts of the two sche- mas.

G. Drawing Inferences

As a result of the comparison the reader is prepared to draw inferences such as complementing information in one structure from what is already known to be a part of the other one.

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H. Test o f Correspondence

At the final stage, every item in the text must have a clearly defined relationship to the entire internal representation the superschema - formed during the comprehension process. The degree of comprehension is thus actually determined by the extent of the correspondence between the textual elements and the internal representation in which they must achieve integra- tion.

Experiment in comprehending poetry

In the remaining section of this paper, I shall describe a kind of experi- ment in which a poem was discussed by a group of students in a certain way which enabled us to test the model described above. This is the poem present- ed to the subjects:

Written in pencil in the sealed railway car

here in this t ransport i eve with abel my son if you see my elder son cain son of adam [Heb., son of man, human being] tell him that i

Pagis, D. (1970), p. 22 (translated from the Hebrew).

MEMORY SCHEMAS

In order to facilitate the analysis of comprehension processes, I present here a list of what seems to be the most essential memory schemas - the background knowledge necessary for an adequate comprehension of the text. The words in the poem which are associatively connected with the schemas are given in parentheses. When direct associations are first made with rather specific schema, the more general "super-schema" is then also added, as long as it is essential for comprehension of the poem:

1. I. Sub-schema: "'the family o f Adam and Eve" (Eve, Abel, Cain) 1.1.1. Par t of the general schema "family" (see below). 1.1.2. The first family in history as an archetype of families created thereafter. 1.1.3. Members of this family were Adam (father), Eve (mother), Cain (elder son) and Abel (younger son). 1.1.4. Sons of this family are called sons of Adam. In Hebrew this word (ben- 'adam) also means "human being."

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1.1.5. A conflict erupted between the two sons at the end of which Cain slew his brother Abel. 1.1.6. Because of his murder of Abel, Cain was exiled, i.e., separated from his family.

1. The general schema "family" (following the sub-schema: the family of Adam and Eve) 1.1. Part of the general schema "social unit." 1.2. Role of the family: production of offspring and socialization. 1.3. The nuclear family includes father, mother and children. 1.4. Parents are emotionally tied to their children.

2.1. Sub-schema: transport o f Jews to concentration camps (locked railroad cars, transports) 2.1.1. Part of the general schema railroad transports, or consignments (see below). 2.1.2. This transport consists of persons being sent/transported against their will. 2.1.3. Persons being transported are Jews in Europe during World War II.

2. The general schema "'railroad transports" (following the sub-schema "transport of Jews to concentration camps") 2.1. Part of the general schema "transports" (which is part of the general schema "transportation"). 2.2. Usually delivering merchandise and livestock (not necessary), which is not the same as conveying human beings - that could be included in the schema "journeys." 2.3. Goods are usually transported in locked cars.

3. The general schema "Jews during Worm War II'" (following sub- schema "transport of Jews to concentration camps") 3.1. Part of the general schema "Jews in Europe." 3.2. Usually summoned and transported to camps. 3.3. Families were separated on the way to the camps.

Note that some schemas which could possibly be associated with the poem were not elaborated here. I assume that not all schemas are processed in the same amount of detail. The amount of elaboration is contingent upon the immediacy of relevance of a particular piece of information to the actual thinking involved in the comprehension process.

To comprehend this poem the reader also needs to apply his knowledge of communication procedures:

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4. The general schema: "'message" (following "written with p e n c i l . . . tell him") 4.1. One means of communicat ion amongst individuals. 4.2. People use "messages" when direct face-to-face contact is impos- sible. 4.3. The message usually consists of the sender, the receiver and the information passed. Also, understanding of the poem requires the reader to have the "sen-

tence" schema - the basic linguistic knowledge, such as that most declarative sentences consist of subject, predicate and object,

I shall now present the experiment dealing with the comprehension of the poem. Six subjects participated in this experiment. All of them were students in the Education Depar tment at the University of Haifa.

The procedure of the experiment was as follows. Subjects received the poem one line at a time, i.e., they were given the title of the poem first and were then asked to express whatever they unders tood from the title itself. Then they were given the first line of the poem and were asked again to express their understanding of the text so far. This procedure repeated itself until the whole poem had been presented. None of the subjects had read the poem or heard of it before the experiment. None of them could guess at the end what the name of the poet was [3].

The reactions of the subjects as recorded during the experiment are presented below. I add my comments after each discussion of a single line.

"written in pencil in the sealed railroad car"

A: An association to railroad cars used for extermination, and someone is writing something.

S: Something with a pencil which can be erased; unlike something written with a pen.

D: The word "locked" points to some mystery, like hidden treasure. M: The words give rise to an expectation; " w r i t t e n . . . in a sealed

railroad car." Perhaps the pencil isn't significant; it is just the instrument used.

L: "Pencil" points to very simple and fast writing; perhaps there is an expectat ion of fate.

D: The word "sealed" shows us something which was destined from above and the pencil stresses the h a s t e . . , there is no time to change the situation.

Comments I find it striking that the first hypothesis concerning the major topic of

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the poem was already directed towards the Holocaust. This was not at all clear f rom the title of the poem itself. The fact the reader needs so little information in order to guess the topic of the poem correctly, suggests that in addition to the general knowledge embedded in the schemas and shared in general by the reader and the writer, there is some additional knowledge only possessed by nembers of a certain society at a certain time. The existence of this special knowledge over and above the general one makes it possible for members of the subgroup to absorb information relatively fast and to extract information from only a few hints presented in the text. What could be the hints in this line that led the readers to such a hypothesis?

First, the title is an incomplete sentence, for its subject is missing. Second, the words "written with pencil" evoked the memory schema of a message. The readers searched for the particular nature of this message. They asked first why it had been written with a pencil. It was suggested that the use of a pencil implies hasty writing under irregular circumstances. Third, one of the subjects felt that the world "sealed" gives rise to a feeling of preordained destiny - something that has been sealed. Combining this feeling with what has been said about "writing with pencil" brings about the idea that this message has something to do with the transport of people in railway cars, perhaps to a concentrat ion camp.

To sum up, the following schemas were activated after reading the title of the poem:

1. A syntactic schema which raised a question about the missing part of the sentence.

2. The words "written with pencil" evoked the schema "message." 3. The words "in a sealed railway car" evoked the schema about the

transport of Jews to concentration camps. Many associations that could be made with the words in this line were

rejected. For example, the pencil was not taken as a drawing instrument. The railroad car was not taken (probably because of the word "sealed") as a regular traincar. These examples demonstrated the function of the third operation mentioned above, in which only relevant information from each schema is chosen for the internal representation. The principle of selection is obviously that items selected are those which can be linked to other pieces of information mentioned in the text. We may call this the principle of consis- tency or continuity (see Kintsch, 1975).

Among the seven operations described in the model, only the first three were activated here: recall of schemas from memory, hypotheses concerning major themes in the text, and tests of relevance. A hypothesis about the major theme of the text was already defined, although clearly there is not yet enough information to support it. The support or rejection of this hypothesis will be at the center of cognitive activity during the reading of the following lines.

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First line: "here in this t ransport"

A: The word " transport" reinforces the hypothesis that the text is about t ransportat ion to gaschambers and concentration camps.

S: If the two lines were to appear together, they would immediately give rise to the association of the Holocaust .

M: The preposition "in" (the railroad car) in the title of the poem already led me to think that something was written inside the car. The word "here" in this line reinforces this meaning.

S: That is, someone who is inside the car is writing. L: Actually, it doesn't have to be that the one who is writing is inside. D: The first two lines can possibly be interpreted as if the text is about a

cattle car, perhaps something like cowboys or the Wild West. Until now, there has been nothing to refute such a possibility.

Comments It is clear now that readers' reactions could be predicted by Miller's

model. The students were making hypotheses while reading the title of the poem and they were looking to support these hypotheses in reading the first line of the poem. In the discussion following this line two subjects pointed to the fact that the message was written inside the car. The question raised was what the use of a message written inside the car could be. F rom what we know about sealed railroad cars which are used for delivering goods or animals, it should have been written "on the sealed car." Subjects noted the inconsistency between what they knew about sealed cars from the schema "transports and railroad cars" and between the fact that here something was written inside. The only way to settle this kind of inconsistency is to say that these particular railroad cars do not carry goods or livestock, but people capable of writing. This is a very special situation which directed the readers to think about people carried to concentration camps. It is only under such circumstances that people were remembered to be transported in sealed cars. This is an example of comprehension processes in which knowledge of spe- cial schemas - part of the knowledge of history - comes to the aid of the reader in his at tempt to connect pieces of information which are inconsistent.

The first three words in this line reinforced in most of the readers the hypothesis suggested in the reading of the title of the poem, i.e., the hypothe- sis regarding the t ransportat ion of people, and that one of these people wrote the message with the pencil. Interestingly, however, the words "trans- portat ion" or "railroad car" evoked in one of our subjects the schema "trans- portat ion of livestock." There is, to be sure, a problem with this interpreta- tion. As we have mentioned above, subjects noted that the message was written inside the car, and not on the outside, which would be more appro- priate with regard to the t ransportat ion of livestock. Seemingly, the mecha- nism by which a text is comprehended can, in fact, tolerate contradictions. In

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other words, logical reasoning is not sufficient for an a priori rejection of "schemas recalled from memory."

There is little new information in this line to cause recall of new sche- mas. The major operation here seemed to be the confirmation of the hypoth- esis formed earlier. Thus the third operation, the "test of relevance," was the most active.

The new information was checked in the light of the previous one. That is why, for example, the word "here" suported the preposition "in" thereby confirming the hypothesis that the message had been written inside the rail- way car, and can therefore be explained in the context of transportat ion to concentration camps.

The second line: "i eve"

A: There is a woman who is writing in the first person, Eve, mother of all human beings.

D: Is Eve in this railroad car? M: This line is part of the message that was written with a pencil. A: Eve comes (in Hebrew) from the word "life." M: Eve is not the poet; she is the one who wrote in the car. She is a

woman with a strong historical consciousness. She meant to leave a written testimony. That could be the purpose of her writting. It's well-known that there were people whose aim was to leave a written record. There were some sealed vases found in the ghettoes.

D: With regard to her name, this woman wishes to project herself as the mother of all human beings - the first mother on earth.

M: I don't think the name Eve was important. It could be Rebacca or whatever.

D: The word "Eve" - in Hebrew, "chava" - can still be related to the subject of cattle. (In Hebrew the word "chava" also means "a farm.)"

S: Although the immediate association is with Eve the mother.

Comments With this second line of the poem the comprehension process - recall of schemas from memory, development of hypotheses about major themes, test of relevance of information in these schemas, and their integration into a single consistent representation - is hindered. Memory schemas concerning Eve the biblical character are not consistent with memory schemas that are connected with the theme of transportat ion of Jews to concentration camps. Facts regarding t h e place and time of the two are entirely different. One way to bridge the gap between the already formed hypothesis about the theme of the poem and the new informa- tion formed now, is to ignore the historical context of the name Eve.

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Indeed, at this point there is no need to assign special importance to it. The name Eve could be taken as just another name of someone who is t r y i n g to leave a record of what has happened. Howevel:, such a suggestion is not easily accepted. The reason, I believe, has something to do with the special predisposition of the reader, i.e., the special mode of functioning of the cognitive operat ion which characterizes poetry reading.

Let us now expand the notion of this special cognitive predisposi- tion in the reading of poetry. Consider this example: If we read a story in the newspaper about someone by the name of Jeremiah who wrote a book, it is doubtful that the reader would associate him with the biblical prophet. I assume this is so, because for one reason or the other, the predisposition of the average newspaper reader is not conducive to associa- tions of this type. However, if the same Jeremiah appeared in a poem, I would expect the reader to ask what the poet meant by using this particular name. Expectedly, the reader would recall that Jeremiah is the name of a famous prophet. Appa~rently, what makes these processes special is the reader's readiness to perceive words in the poetic text as being replete with information. Hence, the name Eve would be just another female name if met by a newspaper reader, but it connotes primarily the biblical figure to the reader of poetry.

Another aspect of this different predisposition is related to the extent of adherence to general logical results commonly accepted in our semantic knowledge. This question is akin to the well-known problem of comprehen- sion of metaphors: should we take the common rules of our language completely "seriously" we could not possibly form such expressions as "flying ambassador" for literally speaking, an ambassador cannot f l y . . . nevertheless, the expression may appear in newspapers or in a common discourse. In literary studies expressions like these are called "dead meta- phors." What happens in poetic writing is far more extreme than the usual use of metaphoric expressions. In poetry we often encounter descriptions of visions or events that could only occur in dreams, such as meetings of people f rom different eras or distant places.

H o w is one to explain the reader's readiness to abandon normal reading procedures occasionally and to at tempt to extract information from a string of words that cannot be interpreted according to the common syntactic and semantic rules? I do not think that there is an adequate answer to this question. It seems that when the reader is predisposed to extract information from words of poetry, (s)he adopts two kinds of operations: The first is a search for communal i ty - a possible relationship between words in the text that are not usually semantically related. The second would involve bending, or even cancelling out, one or more of the common semantic rules which is generally applied more rigidly. For example: Flying usually refers to birds or

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to airplanes - not to human beings. Ambassadors are human, therefore they cannot be considered as flying objects. Nevertheless, one can find common features in the two objects, such as being airborne and traveling rapidly. Now, if we apply more flexibly the rule that ambassadors (as other human beings) cannot be considered as flying objects, "flying ambassador" may be conceived as a meaningful expression.

With regard to the model of poetry comprehension suggested above, these two operations are related to the fourth stage - "test of relevance." The criteria of this test are adjusted differently when one is prepared to read poetry.

I suggest then that one aspect of the special predisposition which characterizes poetry-reading is this readiness to process the text in a special way typical of the way in which metaphors are comprehended.

Returning to our discussion of Pagis' poem, one possible way to reconcile the idea of Eve, the biblical figure, with Eve, the Jewish mother who is being transported to the concentration camp, is to find out what they might have in common and to bend our semantic rules, to accomodate both ideas in a complementary fashion.

Interestingly, the word Eve (in Hebrew) applies also to a cattle farm. Thus in this last line the reader can find further support for the interpretation of livestock being transported. True, it would be ungrammatical and even quite difficult to comprehend the expression "i eve" in the sense of "I am a farm," but since the reader is already predisposed to read this text in a special mode. (s)he is ready to accept certain illogical phenomena.

The third line: "with abel my son"

D: Eve is inside the railroad car with her son Abel. A: Precisely her good son Abel. She wants her good son to be with her. M: Clearly, now, the use of the name Eve is symbolic. So is the use of the

name Abel. Eve is a symbol o f "mothe r" and Abel is a symbol of the innocent son who was killed by his brother for no good reason at all.

D: It is difficult to relate Abel and Eve to transportat ion in the cattle- vans. But if we accept the interpretation of the Holocaust , Cain must be the one responsible for the transportation, and Abel the one being transported. Cain is the one who has sealed the car. This is why he is not inside with his mother and Abel.

S: The mother remains with Abel; not with Cain or Adam. This again symbolizes the separation of parents from their children during the Holo- caust.

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Comments Abel, the son of Eve, is another part of the biblical schema of the family

of Adam and Eve; thus bringing him up, in this line supports the interpreta- tion which identifies Eve with the mother of this family. The question now is to relate Eve and Abel to the context of the Holocaust . Note the readers were quick to suggest a symbolic interpretation of Eve and Abel. But bringing in the schema of Adam and Eve's family gives rise to the question of other parts of the schema which have not been mentioned in this text.

Thus, readers ask about Cain why he is not with his mother. One at tempt to explain this is that Eve wants her "good" s o n t o be with her. Such an at tempt relies on a single piece of information, familiar from the Bible story (Abel being the good son). But other, more comprehensive explana- tions are also possible. When the reader notes the analogy between the family being transported to a concentrat ion camp, and Adam and Eve's family (fifth operation), (s)he may start comparing the two schemas (our sixth operation) and draw conclusions from the comparisons (the seventh operation). As a result, reader suggest that Eve is here together with Abel, because Abel is the one who was killed according to the Bible story. This is compatible with the fact that Abel is the one who is about to be killed in this modern context. Moreover, Cain is not together with them because he is the killer in the Bible story; and in the context of the Holocaust , he is the one in charge of the operation; perhaps he is the one who has sealed the car. This explanation has the advantage of being in such a relation to the two schemas that one schema complements the other as well as explaining it.

In summary, an important operation in comprehending this poem is the comparison (sixth operation). In reading this poem, the reader confronts the schema of the Jewish family in the railroad car with the schema of the family of Adam and Eve. Both are first of all families, consisting of parents and children. Both have been separated because of a tragic event. The difference is that historically with Jewish families transported to concentration camps, even though they were separated, in many cases all members of the family were finally killed. By contrast, in the case of Adam and Eve's family, one member of the family, Abel, was killed by a member of his own family.

In drawing conclusions (seventh operation), the reader can take a crucial step towards "complete" understanding of the poem: One outcome of the comparison previously mentioned is the idea that it is also in the family going to the concentration camp that the killers (the Nazis) are indeed part of the family. This is so because Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, and the killer in the biblical story is here identified with the Nazi murderer of the Holocaust . Such an interpretation, however shocking, is nevertheless a legitimate read- ing of this poem. It also suggests that the son missing from the railroad car is perhaps the one who has prevented his mother from completing her message, as we shall see below.

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The fourth line: "if you see my elder son" M: "My elder son." That is Cain; she has a kind of message for him. S: It supports the point regarding separation. She is looking for Cain. M: She is not going to see him again, so she leaves a message for him. A: Perhaps she wants to tell him what she has been through lately. M: Maybe she is asking him for an explanation of his behavior. A: She is resigned to the fact that she won't see him again - that's why

she says, "if you s e e . . . " M: There is a fundamental split between her and her older son. Other-

wise she would address her message to him directly. D: There is a kind of concern for her older son. M: The split between the mother and her son is more spiritual than

physical. It could be that he is quite near but that she is not able to contact him because of his brother's murder.

Comments A new sentence starts with this line. Using his syntactic knowledge, the

reader identifies it as the beginning of a conditional sentence (starts with i f . . . ) . The message schema has already been raised, hence the reader readily sees this line as the initial part of the message written in pencil. This schema "message" consists of three major elements - the sender, the receiver and the message itself. Information-processing is aimed at identifying these three elements within the particular situation of the poem.

The sender, quite obviously, is Eve; the message is to be expected in the following lines. The information given in this line indicates the receiver - Eve's older son. But the process of comprehension is not to be concluded with the identification of these three elements. Introducing Eve's older son, Cain, gives rise to associations, to other pieces of information, tied in with the schema, which characterizes the figure of Cain, including information concerning him as the murderer of his brother. The message is, therefore, meant for the murderer.

This presents us with a problem: What we know about the relationship between mother and son is not compatible with what we know about the relationship between the murderer and the mother of his victim. The first can imply an at tempt to communicate; but in the second, there would be little reason to wish to communicate with each other.

This message is, therefore, not a simple one. It is an at tempt to commu- nicate in a situation of irreconcilable conflict - the conflict which has evolved out of murder committed within a family.

However, it is just this impossible situation, which makes it possible to understand the inconsistencies of this context. The need for a message be- comes clear just because of the split between the mother and her son. Based on his knowledge of the biblical story, one reader suggested that the mother

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is asking for an explanation of Cain's behavior. Another reader suggested that the split between the son and his mother could be spiritual in nature rather than physical. This is why her message was not directed to him personally. Thus, the information from the biblical story, however prob- lematic, does make sense with regard to the special situation described in the poem.

The f i f th line: "cain son of adam" (in Hebrew: son of man; human being)

M: Eve reminds him of what he was born to be - son of man. D: She meant to say that Cain is also a human being. According to the

biblical story he is a sinner, but nonetheless, still a human being. On the other hand, Eve is a mother and she sees even her sinful son as a human being and also as her son. Her feelings towards him don' t change.

M: The words "son of adam" emphasize the fact that he is at once a son of Adam and a human being.

A: There is an interesting point here - she identifies Cain as the son of Adam and Abel as her own son. The tragedy is that she was separated from both.

D: It is as if Eve said to Cain, "You did something that none of Adam's offspring would have done."

Comments In a certain sense this line adds no new information. The words "cain,

son of adam" are equivalent referents of the character mentioned in the previous line by the words "my elder son". Syntactically, the expressions in the fifth line are apposites. Nevertheless, the special predisposition to extract information from a poetic text leads the reader in this case to relate himself to these apposites as expressions containing special meanings.

Indeed, the words "son of adam" certainly have a double meaning in Hebrew. On the one hand they refer to the real son of Adam; and on the other hand they refer to t h e concept of a human being. In this context, however, these two schemas are incompatible. The schema "human being" has to do with norms of behavior which are diametrically opposed to our knowledge of Cain, the murderer. Again, the reader could ignore one of these meanings in order to avoid the problematic interpretation; but as mentioned above, his/her predisposition to read a poetic text is conducive to rather intensive information-processing. Hence the interpretation that Cain the murderer is also a human being. Once more we realize how the processing Of information by evoking schemas as wholes makes it possible and almost necessary for the reader to read beyond the information given, to compare schemas and to draw conclusions.

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The sixth line: "tell him that i" (readers were told that this was the last line of the poem)

A: The last line? - maybe something happened to her - perhaps it was difficult for her to write?

L: Maybe it's the last line of the poem because she couldn't finish her message.

S: She is really interested in saying something to him. M: What does she want to say to him? A: Something happened - maybe she was caught - or the pencil was lost. M." Of all she had to say to Cain, what could she possibly express in

words? There are no words to express something like that. A: No mother can say to her son the murderer what she actually thinks

of him. Perhaps she is afraid to express her feelings in writing. D: Nevertheless, she does wish to make contact - to say something but

she has to pass it on through other hands. She cannot do it herself.

Comments Syntactic knowledge (the sentence schema) indicates that this sentence is

incomplete. Comprehension processes are now directed towards explaining this fact. It is interesting to follow the readers' at tempt to account for it. The first explanation posits a mundane reason: "perhaps something happened to h e r ; " . . . "maybe it is difficult for her to write." Actually, these are logical and acceptable reasons, but as readers of poetry, they keep looking for explanations which may be tied up with more parts of the text. Thus, they summon to their assistance schemas of knowledge which are related both to the situation of the Holocaust and to that of the biblical story. One explana- tion was that she couldn't finish writing; another, that she had been caught. (Readers know that the railroad cars were stopped immediately upon arrival at their destination, and the people in them abruptly removed.)

At last, recalling schemas from the biblical story, however remote, actu- ally helped the readers to reach a more satisfactory explanation. It turned out that this sentence has remained incomplete because there was no possible ending to it: As mentioned above, Cain, to whom the message is addressed, is identified with the Nazis at the concentration camp. That being as it is, what could his mother possibly have to say to him? Here again, there is a contra- diction between the information included in the two schemas recalled - the schema which describes mother-son relationships and the one which describes the relationship between the murderer and the murdered. In the first schema, a desire for contact is implied, but in the second, the opposite is true. Thus, it is herein, taking into acount both the Holocaust and the biblical situation, that a satisfactory explanation was found for the incompleteness of the sentence.

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THE SECOND READING OF THE POEM

So far I have presented readers' interpretations in the line-by-line com- prehension of the poem. Nevertheless, it is my impression that most readers are not satisfied with a single reading. The subjects in this experiment were asked whether they had read the poem again. Indeed, all of them said that they had re-read it at least once. Consequently, they were asked for thei r subsequent interpretations.

D: When I realized that this was the last line, I immediately returned to the poem and read it f rom the beginning in order to discover its message.

A: During the second reading I thought that Eve wanted to put herself in Abel's place.

D: The second reading reinforced my feeling that the message of the poem was to bring people t oge the r . . . "Tell people that Cain is a human being, too."

N: Eve's last deed before her death was an expression of her wish to be reunited with her older son Cain the murderer.

M: During my second reading of the poem I gained a wider perspective. During the first reading, I was interested in the special case described in the poem; but during the second reading, I at tempted to comprehend the general - the symbolic - aspects. Thus, I think now that the murderer is not just Cain.

Comments on this Second Reading Undoubtedly, information-processing of the poem is continued after the

first reading. However, further readings do not necessarily repeat the process of the first one. (Recall of schemas from memory, raising hypotheses about major themes, test of relevance, etc.) In my understanding of readers' com- ments after the second reading, it seems that this analysis can be character- ized as a process which (following Bransford and Franks, 1976) may be called "decontextualization." That is, the process by which the specific facts of the situation described are disregarded in order to gain a wider perspective of the whole event. Subjects were looking for the general message of the poem; not just what Eve says, but what is being said in the poem as a whole.

It could be that the tendency to look for a general message is nothing but a deplorable habit on the part of students of literature. Nevertheless, I think that a genuine cognitive process is at work in subsequent comprehension, similar to that described by Bransford and Franks (1976), which is a process of abstracting the information recalled and preserving it in a more schematic fashion, so that it can be merged with schemas in the memory. Bransford'and Franks call this process "setting the stage." They consider it necessary in order to make possible further use of knowledge schemas in processes of learning and thinking.

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Actually, what happens after the first reading is a continuation of com- prehension processes which started at the time of the first reading, and aimed at drawing conclusions from the text. However, these processes probably occur at various levels. During the first reading, readers are interested in the imme- diate implications of the schemas recalled to make the situation described intelligible. During later readings, readers' efforts relate the content of the poem as a whole to their personal experiences, and to their understanding of life in general (see Perfetti, 1977).

To do this, the reader condenses information gained from the poem into a certain truth (claim or feeling) which can be related to his or her life-experi- ences.

Summary

In analyzing psychological processes involved in reading poetic texts, it was found first that readers' responses are compatible with the reading model suggested by Miller (1976). In the very early stages of processing, readers attempted to identify the major theme of the poem. The additional informa- tion that was introduced later was tested in the light of the hypotheses they made regarding the major themes.

Second, in addition to the psychological operations which are typical of the reading processes of most regular texts, such as recall of memory schemas, developing hypotheses and tests of relevance, we suggested that in the reading of poetic texts there would be at least two additional kinds of processes; namely the process by which the reader discovers analogies, and compares them, and the process of drawing conclusions from this compari- son.

Finally, we found that even these special operations for extracting infor- mation from a poetic text could not by themselves account for complete comprehension in the reading of poetry. It was therefore suggested that the reading of poetry is perhaps qualitatively different from the reading of non- poetic texts.

What characterizes the predisposition of a poetry reader is (a) the ten- dency to process a maximum of information from memory schemas that are evoked during reading; and (b) the reader's readiness to process information expressed similarly to metaphors. That is, to process pieces of information whose meanings would not be considered consistent if taken literally.

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Notes

Admittedly, slowing down the:reading process raises a new problem as to whether these slowed processes are still substantially the same as the more natural situation (whatever that means) of poetry reading. However, since the mental processes of reading will always remain covert and internal, the externalization of these processes by any kind of experi- mental procedure can hardly be achieved without, at least minimal interference with the natural reading situation. Minsky (1975) uses the term frame to denote what Bobrow and Norman (1975) or Rumel- hart and Ortony (1977) following Piaget and others call schema. In his 1975 article he attempts to show that the Frame-System Theory can be applied to the description of various cognitive processes such as vision of a tridimensional object or scene, comprehen- sion of words, sentences, discourse and scenarios. Readers who are familiar with the literature dealing with the comprehension of poetry may recall Richards' (1929) work in which subjects were asked to read poems and to express their reaction to them. Richards' work inspired generations of literary critics and teachers of poetry. The theory he developed in analysing his readers' protocols classified meanings of poetry into four categories, (p. 181): sense, feeling, tone and intention (p. 181). When he summarizes his readers' difficulties in comprehending poetry (p. 13), he refers to their misunderstanding or confusion of these four types of meanings-in addition to some other kinds of misunderstandings. There are, however, fundamental differences between the work of Richards and the study presented here. First, Richards was interested in the most general and comprehensive reactions of his readers-emotionally as well as ideationally, whereas my interest here is limited to the comprehension of the ideational structure of the poem alone. In this sense the present work has a narrower scope. Of greater importance, his aim was to gain insight into the various difficulties people have with reading poetry, so that he could offer an improved method for educating readers. The point I am trying to make in this work is far from being didactic. My objective is to understand and to describe the psychological processes of poetry comprehension. Consequently, in this experiment there is a greater control and structuring imposed on the readers. They only read a single poem and were asked to express their understanding during a gradual presentation of the poem one line at a time. Thus, instead of arriving at a classification of poetic meanings and their related misunderstandings, I am testing a process model of poetry comprehension in an attempt to detect the specific requirements it must have above and beyond a possible reading comprehension model of more regular prose text.

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