Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The ability to make inferences has been identified as crucial for reading comprehension; yet, the mechanisms supportingsuch inferences remain poorly understood. We propose that the activation of related concepts in semantic memory supportsthe ability to make inferences, including in the context of reading comprehension. Consistent with this hypothesis, 2nd-and 3rd-grade students who more strongly co-activated related concepts in a domain (i.e., were more likely to notice thepresence of related distractors when searching for a target) showed better inferential comprehension of written passagesin that domain. This predictive relation was found across three different domains (natural kinds, music, and sports), andwhen controlling for individual differences in co-activation of concepts in a control, unrelated domain. We will discuss theimplications of these results for contemporary accounts of reading comprehension and for designing effective interventionsaimed at improving reading comprehension, a key ability in academic contexts.