Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Predictions were made about the types and the number of inferences to be found in the verbal protocols of subjects reading difficult to understand texts. The predictions were made on the basis of two alternative models of inference generation, the backward bottom-up inference and the forward bottom-up inference. It was also hypothesized that plan-goal and script inferences would be stored longer in STM than coreference and role identification inferences. This implies that plan-goal and script inferences are more likely to be reported than coreference and role Identification inferences. The protocol analyses support the backward bottom-up inference model and support the assumed length of storage in STM of the different types of inferences.