Inference Processes: Integrating Relevant Knowledge and Text Information

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that readers derive a representation of the situation to which text refers, and that causal relations form an important element of the situation model. Singer and Halldorson (1996) previously showed that, after the reading of the causal sequence, "Dorothy poured the bucket of water on the bonfire, The fire went out," the causal outcome primes the relevant world knowledge that water extinguishes fire. Two new experiments revealed that causal antecedents and relevant knowledge mutually prime one another, and that relevant knowledge primes causal outcomes. This supports the proposal that the knowledge relevant to the validation of tentative causal bridging inferences is integrated with the resulting text representation.