Previous text comprehension studies using the contradiction paradigm primarily tested assumptions of the activation mechanism involved in reading. However, the nature of the contradiction in such studies relied on validation of information in readers' general world knowledge. We directly tested this validation process by varying the strength of…

Participants read a series of passages containing an action that required the use of an instrument. In Experiment 1, a naming task failed to detect activation of a target instrument when that instrument was supported in the preceding text. In Experiment 2, reading times were slow on a target sentence that contradicted the inferential information,…

Tests two views of how relevant global information becomes readily available to readers. Demonstrates that backgrounded information became readily available if it shared features in common with the current contents of working memory. Shows that this occurred independently of whether the information was relevant or thematically related;…

Hypothesizes a resonance process in which concepts and propositions in the discourse resonate in response to related elements in the current sentence, initiating a process that makes available a subset of the information in the representation. Reviews research; presents explicit assumptions about the discourse representation; and describes results…

Finds that explicit anaphors only reactivated undergraduate students' target antecedents when they are both lexically and conceptually identical to a target antecedent; but as distance between an anaphor and its antecedent increased, even an explicit anaphor did not reactivate a target antecedent. Shows that distant antecedents were reactivated…