Millis, K. K., Golding, J. M., & Barker, G. (1995). Causal connectives increase inference generation. Discourse Processes, 20(1), 29-49.

Millis, K.; Golding, J.; Barker, G.

1995

Millis, K. K., Golding, J. M., & Barker, G. (1995). Causal connectives increase inference generation. Discourse Processes, 20(1), 29-49.

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This study examined the influence of interclause connectives on inference generation in 3 experiments. 200 undergraduates made lexical decisions after reading statement pairs which were either joined or not joined by the connectives because, and, or after. The pattern of results across the experiments indicate that readers incorporate causal knowledge-based inferences in the discourse representations for sentences containing a causal connective and support the hypothesis that connectives elicit inferences that are based on the connective's meaning. Findings are discussed in the context of previous research on connectives and the connective integration model.

Overall, the results from experiment 1 supported the hypothesis that the connective ‘because’ increases inference generation. The inference encoding score for the connective condition was significantly positive and was significantly greater than the inference encoding score for the no-connective condition, which was near zero. The data also demonstrated that the connective had increased interstatement integration, which led to a more durable memory representation. Participants were faster to answer questions about statement pairs when they were linked with the connective.

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