Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We present the results of an experiment investigating the comprehension of questions about previously shown pictures with geometrical objects and resulting intrusion errors on representations in memory. We manipulated whether definite and indefinite descriptions were at-issue or non-at-issue to the task at hand. For this purpose, descriptions were embedded into restrictive vs. non-restrictive appositive relative clauses. The responses to the questions provided evidence for participants' awareness of presupposition violations. Moreover, false presuppositions had an effect on an immediately following memory task. This effect was present no matter whether the presupposition trigger appeared in an at-issue or non-at-issue context. Furthermore, question processing as well as visual memory was unaffected by the wording of the misinformation: in the constructions under investigation, indefinite descriptions patterned with definite descriptions.