Goal, Event, and State Inferences: An Investigation of Inference Generation During Story Comprehension

Recently, there has been a considerable interest in identifying knowledge-based inferences that are generated during story comprehension. Some types of inferences are generated as readers comprehend a passage, whereas other types of inferences are generated after comprehension Graesser and Clark (1985) have developed a model of narrative comprehension that makes specific predictions about the types of inferences that are generated during short story comprehension. Knowledge-based inferences include states, events, actions, and goals that are associated with relevant generic knowledge structures A number of comprehension models have addressed the notion that activation from multiple information sources enhances inference generation. Referential bridging inferences include (1) inferences specifying that the same word across two propositions refers to the same concept and (2) inferences specifying that an anaphor and its antecedent refer to the same concept. Equally important for a coherent text representation are causal bridging inferences. Causal bridging inferences establish a causal connection between the current sentence and the preceding text.