THE EFFECT OF INFERENTIAL PROCESSES ON PERCEPTUAL IDENTIFICATION

An indirect test of memory, perceptual identification, was used to test the hypothesis that inferences about predictable events as well as inferences used to establish text coherence are encoded at some level of mental representation during reading. Subjects read short texts followed by briefly presented target words. Results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that perceptual identification of targets explicitly presented was significantly higher than that of new targets. Furthermore, targets inferred in order to maintain coherence and targets predicted by the text were identified as well as explicit targets and significantly better than targets schematically appropriate to the text. This pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2. This outcome was not obtained when targets were unrelated to the preceding text (Experiment 1) or when the preceding text was presented in a scrambled order (Experiment 2).