Effects of Narrative Levelson Comprehension :

Theoretical Framework and Methodology

Baptiste Campion

Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)Groupe de Recherche en Médiation des savoirs (GReMS)

Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)

baptiste.campion@uclouvain.behttp://www.uclouvain.be/comu/

AISB07 - AI and Narrative Games for EducationNewcastle 2nd-5th april 2007

• Current PhD research led under supervision ofPr Philippe Marion (UCL) and Daniel Peraya(Univ. of Genève)

• Attempt to combine cognitive and narratologicalapproaches for studying interactive narrative

• Object: Science popularization interactivenarrative

• Current presentation: work in progress

General Overview

• There exists different uses of narration ineducative interactive documents

• Is the educative ʻeffectʼ similar in each case ?

Whatʼs the matter ?

Interest of dinstinctions between situations

Interest of modelling presumed effects of narrationand testing real effects

Interest both for classic and interactive narratives

Interest for researchers and designers

Comprehension is defined followingModel of Comprehension of Van Dijk andKintsch (1983)

Comprehension

Comprehension process: double process(top down and bottom up) of construction ofa coherent representation

I define ʻeducative effectsʼ in terms ofcomprehension.

The reader must build a representation ofnarrative referent

• Story Schemata (for ex. Mandler 1984)• Mental Models Theory (Johnson-Laird 1983)• Consistent and coherent with narratology

Understanding narrative

Following Herman (2002) narrative comprehensiongoes through the construction (by the reader) of astoryworld

Narrative comprehension

This storyworld is:

•A mental model of ʻwhatʼs going on?ʼ•Set up by bottum-up (microdesign) and top-down(macrodesign) process

Use of narrative forcomprehension

Herman (2003):

“My hypothesis is that stories provide, to a degree thatneeds to be determined by future research, domain-general tools for thinking”

→ Storyworld is the base on whichcomprehension of educative matter transmittedthrough a narrative is allowed

The ʻlevelsʼ of narrationWe postulate educational use of narrative on at leasttwo levels:

•Surface level (storyworld related to the story)•Deep level (storyworld related to knowledge domain)

→ Different comprehension effects ?

• Deep level narrative should lead subjects to builda relatively unified representation

• Surface level narrative should oblige subjects towork with two levels of representation : one forthe story itself and one another for the educativecontent

Research Assumptions

Research Assumptions (II)

STORY

A&B mixedStoryworld useful for:•The story•The educative content

A. Storyworld useful forthe story

+B. Representation of

educative content

Methodology• Quasi-experimentation• Comparison of representation of a scientific

phenomenon whether explained with a surface levelnarrative or a deep level narrative

• Coherence of representations is observed withquestionnaires : definition question, problem-solvingquestion and drawing the phenomena

• Indicators : relations between elements, specificvocabulary, conjunctions and disjunctions, ability ofabstracting and re-use gathered info

Current experimentations• Subjects : 100 children of 5th year elementary school

(+/-11 year old)• Experimental material : 3 versions of the explanation

(short website) of a scientific phenomenon (decayformation)

• Deep level, surface level and control group (non-narrative unfollowing Adam criteria [1996])

• Individual passation

Current experimentations (II)Summary of (quasi) experimental design:

Deep levelconditon

Surface levelcondition

Controlgroup

Deep levelnarrative

Surface levelnarrative

Non-narrativeexplanation

Same questionnaire

Identification questionnaire

• Forthcoming results• Elements to take in consideration:

Nuances in results Extraction operations Never forget whatʼs the goal of an

educative document: thepresented distinction make nosense without this

Conclusions

Thank you for your attention.

Baptiste Campion

baptiste.campion@uclouvain.be

Université catholique de LouvainRuelle de la Lanterne Magique 14BE 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)