WHEN ARE CLOZE ITEMS SENSITIVE TO CONSTRAINTS ACROSS SENTENCES?

Abstract

This article, the long‐promised sequel to Chihara, Oiler, Weaver, and Chavez‐Oller (1977, n. 1), does two things. First, it reviews the continuing controversy about whether cloze items in general are sensitive to constraints beyond 5–10 words on either side of them. It is concluded that some are sensitive to constraints that reach even beyond 50 words on either side of a blank. The research shows that this sort of context sensitivity is inaccessible to rank beginners, but becomes increasingly accessible to more proficient language users. Second, in addition to reviewing several successful replications of these findings and critiquing several failed attempts, this article gives an item‐by‐item analysis of the experimental data from Chihara et al. (1977). It is demonstrated that about 10% of the items in each of the two texts examined are highly sensitive to constraints ranging across sentence boundaries. The basis for this sensitivity is discussed and the sensitive items are contrasted with nonsensitive ones.