Albrecht, J. E., & O'Brien, E. J. (1993). Updating a mental model: Maintaining both local and global coherence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(5), 1061-1070.

Albrecht, J.; O'Brien, E.

1993

Albrecht, J. E., & O'Brien, E. J. (1993). Updating a mental model: Maintaining both local and global coherence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(5), 1061-1070.

2

This study investigated, in 2 experiments, whether readers experience comprehension difficulty when they read texts in which local coherence is maintained but global incoherence is introduced. Ss read passages containing an elaborate description of a main character presented early in the text that was inconsistent with actions carried out by the main character later in the text. In Exp 1, reading times for critical sentences were significantly longer when the earlier description and the critical sentences were inconsistent. In Exp 2, resolution of global inconsistencies improved memory for the regions of the text that involved the inconsistencies. The results are discussed within a mental model approach to comprehension in which readers attempt to maintain both local and global coherence.

The present results replicate the findings of experiment 1. Reading times for critical sentences that followed the inconsistent elaboration were longer than reading times for the same sentences when they followed either consistent or neutral elaboration. The differences in reading times for the second critical sentence followed the same pattern, but as in experiment 1, the differences across conditions were reduced.

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