Dr. Erwin Segal
Associate Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Office: 319 Park Hall
Phone: (716) 645-3650 x. 319
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Summary of Research Interests:

1. Most of the empirical research that I have done over the last few years has focussed on narrative comprehension. I have developed a theory of narrative comprehension and interpretation with other members of the Center for Cognitive Science. One aspect of understanding narrative is the liberal use of indexicals and other forms of deixis as a frame of interpretation. The reader (or author) imagines herself directly at a particular location in the world of the story. The language of the text supports this idea. In fact, much of the language of the text cannot be understood without some such notion. Changing the grammatical form of aspects of the text causes differences in its understanding and "feeling" even when the propositional content remains constant. We study the language of real texts to see how different information and feelings are transmitted and we modify the text to see what cognitive changes ensue. There are many unsolved problems in understanding narrative comprehension and production that research based on this theory can help enlighten.
2. I have been involved in research with Dr. Hastrup investigating what people understand about the combination of factors that lead to the likelihood of certain diseases. One issue is the fact that the probability of getting some diseases is a function of certain behavior patterns. We hope to find intervention strategies that increase the understanding of how different causal agents interact and ultimately to get people to understand the need for and to implement healthier behavior patterns.
3. I have been interested in reasoning and problem solving for many years. Consistent with my research in Narrative Comprehension is the belief that one understands mathematical concepts by creating conceptual models which get developed according to certain principles that can be described by formulas and algorithms. Recently I have been reading more specifically about the learning and teaching of mathematics, and I have been to conferences on the teaching of statistics. I expect to start running some studies finding out how much students (possibly of different ages and backgrounds) understand the structures underlying elementary mathematical (and statistical) principles, the patterns of that knowledge, and how this understanding can be extended to the learning of other mathematics and statistics.

Representative Publications:

• Segal, E. M., Duchan, J. F., & Scott. P. J. (1991). The discourse meaning of interclausal connectives: Evidence from adults' interpretations of simple stories. Discourse Processes, 14, 27-54.
  
• Segal, E. M. & Duchan, J. F. (1997). Interclausal connectives as indicators of structuring in discourse. In J. Costermans & M. Fayol (Eds.) Processing Interclausal Relations for the Production and Comprehension of Text. (pp. 95-120) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  
• Segal, E. M., Miller, G., Hosenfeld, C., Mendelsohn, A., Russell, W., Julian, J., Greene, A., & Delphonse, J. (1997). Person and Tense in Narrative Interpretation. Discourse Processes, 24, 271-307.
  
• Segal, E. M. (1998). Deixis in short fiction: The contribution of Deictic Shift Theory to reader experience of literary fiction. In Barbara Lounsberry, Susan Lohafer, Mary Rohrberger, Stephen Pett, & R. C. Feddersen (Eds.) Telling Tales: Perspectives on the Short Story, (pp 169-175). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.