Accessing distant premise information: how memory feeds reasoning.

According to current psychological models of deduction, people can draw inferences on the basis of information that they receive from different sources at different times. In 3 reading-comprehension experiments, the authors demonstrated that premises that appear far apart in a text (distant) are not accessed and are therefore not used as a basis for logical inferences (Experiment 1), unless the premises are reinstated by a contextual cue (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the authors investigated whether these deductions are then integrated into the reader's situation model of the text. The results are interpreted in terms of a collaboration between memory-based text processing and higher level schema-driven logical reasoning.

Do readers make inferences about conversational topics?

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.

The effect of negation on deductive inferences.

Research shows that negation can suppress the activation of propositions presented explicitly in text, but does negation have a similar effect on propositions that can be inferred? That is, does negation inhibit the inference process? Four experiments investigated whether a deductive inference that produces a negated conclusion (therefore not a) is made as readily as a similar inference form that yields an affirmative conclusion (therefore a). A combination of naming latencies, verification times, and reading times indicate that negation does not affect the deductive inference process itself, although it may inhibit the activation of inferred concepts.