Accessibility of information about goals during the processing of narrative texts.
We used a probe procedure to show that a goal established earlier in a text is active in memory at the point of its achievement. An initial experiment demonstrated that a goal category (began an investigation to nab the THIEF) is accessible, relative to a control condition, following the processing of a goal-achievement sentence (had the PURSER brought to his office). The remaining experiments provided evidence against several explanations of this result: (a) that the goal category's accessibility is due to an advantage in the strength of its initial encoding; (b) that the goal category is maintained in memory from the point at which the goal is established; or (c) that the goal category is reinstated at the point of goal achievement as the result of a high-level inference. The results suggest that the goal category is reinstated as the result of a low-level inference similar to the type that links an anaphor and its antecedent.
Dopkins
S
S
Department of Psychology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052.
Klin
C
C
Myers
J L
JL
D000124:Achievement; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors