RESUMEN
In two experiments we examined how temporal aspects of narrative events influence comprehension. In Experiment 1 participants read paragraphs in which a critical event was followed by a phrase that signaled a time shift (After an hour versus After a moment). Consistent with earlier findings (e.g., Zwaan, 1996), fixation durations were longer on the phrase that signaled a larger time shift. However, there was no evidence that a larger time shift affected the accessibility of event information in Experiment 1, when the dependent measure was ease of anaphor comprehension, or in Experiment 2, when a recognition probe task was used. Although the discontinuation of an event (Maurice stopped versus was painting) did not affect anaphor reading times, it did lead to longer recognition times for the event. These results indicate that at least some event aspects remain accessible following a change in time and that the dependent measure can have a critical impact on the conclusions.
RESUMEN
When we read that two protagonists in a story chatted together for a couple of minutes, do we draw inferences about the topic of the conversation on the basis of information presented earlier in the text? Participants read passages in which protagonists part and later reunite; the passages ended with a sentence either that implied conversation or did not. In Experiment 1, participants' continuation sentences indicated that inferences about the topic of conversation were drawn. Recognition probe data in Experiment 2 provided more immediate evidence of such inferences. Experiment 3 addressed a possible confound in Experiment 2 and again provided evidence that readers inferred the continuation of the conversation. In Experiments 4 and 5, we investigated the effect of having the targeted conversational topic be a secret that should not be shared between the protagonists. The results are discussed in terms of the collaboration between passive, memory-based text processing and schema-driven comprehension processes.
