Prevalence and Persistence of Predictive Inferences

Four experiments are presented that explore the prevalence of predictive inferences and their persistence in memory. In Experiment 1, using a word naming task, evidence of predictive inferences was found when the passage context was highly constrained. In contrast, in Experiment 3, when an additiona...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of memory and language 1999-05, Vol.40 (4), p.593-604
Main Authors: Klin, Celia M., Guzmán, Alexandria E., Levine, William H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
comprehension
forward inference
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Learning. Memory
Memory
predictive inference
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
reading
text memory
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Summary:Four experiments are presented that explore the prevalence of predictive inferences and their persistence in memory. In Experiment 1, using a word naming task, evidence of predictive inferences was found when the passage context was highly constrained. In contrast, in Experiment 3, when an additional consequence of the predictive context was described, presumably shifting attention from the to-be-inferred event, predictive inferences were no longer drawn. Experiment 4 examined the influence of passage length and found that length alone did not have a strong influence on the likelihood of drawing forward inferences. With regard to their persistence in memory, previous research has found that forward inferences are quickly dropped from memory. In contrast, the results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that forward inferences were encoded into readers' long-term memory representation; readers slowed down on a sentence that contradicted the inference, even when an entire unrelated episode intervened between the inference and the contradiction.
ISSN:0749-596X
1096-0821
DOI:10.1006/jmla.1998.2628