ABSTRACT
The analysis of cognitive processes in real time is one of the most methodologically difficult tasks in all of psychology. This chapter summarizes in a convenient form the advantages and the limitations of using thinking-out-loud (TOL) protocols for studying language comprehension. There has been much controversy in the history of psychology about verbal reports as data, focusing primarily upon their oft-reported unreliability. In a detailed analysis of verbal reports as data, Ericsson and Simon clarified several points about their use that are important to keep in mind when thinking about TOL data. There are many kinds of TOL data that can be collected for studying text comprehension. Rumelhart and Graesser have both used a TOL task in which subjects answered specific questions after each sentence of a text. Rumelhart’s subjects answered five WH-questions (who, what, why, when, where) after each sentence. The texts began ambiguously, with each successive sentence providing additional constraints on what was going on.
