discourseprocessing

Discourse processing refers to the cognitive mechanisms involved in understanding and producing connected speech or text. It encompasses how individuals interpret meaning beyond individual sentences, considering the relationships between propositions, the speaker's or writer's intentions, and the context in which communication occurs. Key aspects include maintaining coherence and cohesion, resolving anaphora (pronoun references), inferring implicit information, and constructing mental representations of the discourse. Researchers in psycholinguistics and cognitive science investigate discourse processing to understand how humans build meaning from extended linguistic input. This field examines the role of working memory, long-term knowledge, and attention in constructing a coherent understanding of a narrative, argument, or conversation. Challenges in discourse processing can arise from ambiguity, complex sentence structures, or a lack of shared background knowledge between communicators. The study of discourse processing also informs areas such as education, artificial intelligence (natural language understanding), and clinical linguistics.