Interactions between ease of bridging inference generation and working memory

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Authors
Mueller, Melinda K.
Advisors
Bohn-Gettler, Catherine M.
Issue Date
2012-04-18
Type
Conference paper
Keywords
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Citation
Melinda Mueller. (2012). Interactions between Ease of Bridging Inference Generation and Working Memory. -- In Proceedings: 8th Annual Symposium: Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects. Wichita, KS: Wichita State University, p.102-103
Abstract

Although research demonstrates that bridging inferences are generated at coherence breaks, increased reading times also occur two words after a coherence break. This processing delay could be related to the ease of generating bridging inferences. To explore the cause of this processing delay, participants read texts where the ease of generating an inference was manipulated by gradually decreasing the explicitness of an action. Reading times for target sentences that followed the critical sentences increased as explicitness decreased. This effect was more pronounced in readers with high working memory, a skill that is related to inference generation. These findings provide preliminary evidence that processing delays during bridging inference generation are affected by ease of generation.

Table of Contents
Description
Paper presented to the 8th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Marcus Welcome Center, Wichita State University, April 18, 2012.
Research completed at the Department of Counseling, and the Department of Educational and School Psychology, College of Education
Publisher
Wichita State University. Graduate School.
Journal
Book Title
Series
GRASP;
v.8;
PubMed ID
DOI
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