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  • 2015_PerezCainCastellanosBajo

    Rights statement: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-015-0528-0

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Inferential revision in narrative texts: an ERP study

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  • Ana Perez
  • Kate Cain
  • Maria Castellanos
  • Teresa Bajo
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>11/2015
<mark>Journal</mark>Memory and Cognition
Issue number8
Volume43
Number of pages31
Pages (from-to)1105-1135
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date6/06/15
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We evaluated the process of inferential revision during text comprehension in adults. Participants with high or low working memory read short texts, in which the introduction supported two plausible concepts (e.g., ‘guitar/violin’), although one was more probable (‘guitar’). There were three possible continuations: a neutral sentence, which did not refer back to either concept; a no revise sentence, which referred to a general property consistent with either concept (e.g., ‘…beautiful curved body’); and a revise sentence, which referred to a property that was consistent with only the less likely concept (e.g., ‘…matching bow’). Readers took longer to read the sentence in the revise condition, indicating that they were able to evaluate their comprehension and detect a mismatch. In a final sentence, a target noun referred to the alternative concept supported in the revise condition (e.g., ‘violin’). ERPs indicated that both working memory groups were able to evaluate their comprehension of the text (P3a), but only high working memory readers were able to revise their initial incorrect interpretation (P3b) and integrate the new information (N400) when reading the revise sentence. Low working memory readers had difficulties inhibiting the no longer relevant interpretation and thus failed to revise their situation model, and they experienced problems integrating semantically related information into an accurate memory representation.

Bibliographic note

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-015-0528-0