Integration of Topic and Subordinate Information During Reading

Four experiments examined how readers integrate subordinate information with relevant context as they read. Ss read texts a sentence at a time with occasional interruptions lasting 30 s. Following a distractor task, they resumed reading after being reminded of the topic sentence of the last paragraph they had read (topic cue condition), or being reminded of the last sentence they had read (local cue condition), or receiving no reminder of what they had been reading (no cue condition). Reading times on the first sentence following interruption were faster in the topic and local cue conditions than in the no cue condition (a) when the topic and local cues supplied missing referents for the target sentences, (b) when the target sentences were written to be understood as independent statements, and (c) whether the target sentences were embedded in short or long texts. Results are interpreted as demonstrating that readers integrate subordinate information with relevant topics, as well as with the immediate local context.