Example of Summary to Set Context in a Review of Literature

The Standard Summary - Form and Function

Example of Summary to Set Context in a Review of Literature

(Note how the writer uses the source "summary" to set up a theoretical explanation of reading and then extends that definition to her argument about hypertext.)

The prior knowledge readers have about reading can be called reading schemata. David Rumelhart (1980) defines schemata as "the building blocks of cognition" that are "employed in the process of interpreting sensory data (both linguistic and nonlinguistic), in retrieving information from memory, in organizing actions, in determining goals and subgoals, in allocating resources, and generally in guiding the flow of processing in the system" (p. 33-34). If reading conventions are schematic, then a hypertext reader, even one with little experience reading from a computer screen, brings prior knowledge about reading paper texts to the task of reading hypertexts. This prior knowledge can be adapted to the development of hypertext-reading schemata. Rumelhart calls the evolution of schema "tuning" (p. 53). If we watch, analyze, and learn how readers read hypertexts, then we may be able to facilitate an evolution of paper text reading schemata to hypertext reading schemata.

Rumelhart says that one kind of "tuning" schemata amounts to "replacing a constant portion of a schema with a variable one--that is, adding a new variable to a schema" (p. 53). One constant portion of a paper text navigation schema, for example, is that texts are fixed in a linear structure. When a reader sees sentences and paragraphs on a computer screen that look like text in a paper document, the reader may instantiate a linear text navigation schema. But when the reader realizes that there are no page numbers, and no pages as the reader knows them, then the constant, that documents are made up of pages in a linear sequence, is replaced with a variable that sentences and paragraphs can appear like they do on pages, but not necessarily on paper. If the reader "tunes" this portion of the linear text navigation schema, then the reader becomes open to developing hypertext navigation schemata.

Rumelhart, D.E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, and W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension (pp. 38-58). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Example of Summary to Set Context in a Review of Literature