The role of inferences in discourse comprehension

Abstract

This study examined how people use inferences to aid comprehension of connected discourse. Subjects were presented passages in which a target sentence was followed later in the passage by an experimentally controlled continuation sentence. A recognition test measured subjects' false alarm rates to equally plausible inferences from the target sentence. When the continuation sentence was unrelated to the inferences, false alarm probabilities were equal for the inferences. When comprehension of the continuation sentence depended on the target plus an inferential chain that included one of the inferences, false recognition rates for that inference were increased relative to the control condition. This suggests that people store in memory both explicitly stated information and inferences required for contextual integration of that information.