THINKING ALOUD - TELLING A STORY ABOUT A STORY

In this commentary, we provide a rationale for the use of verbal proto cols in the study of discourse processing. We argue that readers do no t provide a veridical report of their underlying mental processes when they ''think aloud'' during text comprehension. Rather, they construc t a text representation and then use it to ''tell a story'' about thei r understanding. This story reveals important information about the pr ocesses involved in text comprehension as well as those involved in co nstructing a message to be understood in a context shared by the speak er and listener. We describe how this view leads to interesting hypoth eses about (a) inferential processing during comprehension, (b) indivi dual differences in comprehension performance, and (c) the processes i nvolved in conversational discourse and storytelling.