The Research On Information Accurate Inference In Discourse Comprehension

The research on inference in discourse comprehension is one of the most important aspect in reading psychology. Its result can not only reveal the process of human reading, but also promote the research of other fields. At present, the research of function of inference is mainly consisted of connective inference and elaborative inference. But the researcher is easy to neglect another one, that is information accurate inference. This kind of inference is different from connective inference, it is not to retain the connective of the discourse comprehension, but to make the comprehension much more smoothly. Though this inference is similar to elaborative inference that can make the information more accuracy, the direction of accurate inference is backward. Because no one had studied this inference, our research is focused on the inevitability of this inference in reading process, and whether it happened on-line or off-line. We not only research the inference in working memory, but also the long-term memory, we conducted three experiments, five sub-experiments. Experiment 1 tested that if the accurate inference can happen necessary in discourse comprehension. In experiment 2, we explore the information inference happen on-line, or trace back to happen in working memory. In experiment 3, farther explore the inference happen on-line or not in long-term memory. In all, the results show that the information inference in discourse comprehension is inevitable, and it can happen on-line not only in working memory, but also in long-term memory.