The Predictive Effect Of Characteristics Of The Protagonist In Chinese Text Comprehension

2x2 within-subject design was used in three experiments .Our experiments explore readers' application of characteristics of the protagonist to produce the predictive inference about the behavior of the protagonist. In experiment 1, although readers applied the characteristics of the protagonist to predict his behavior in a specific circumstance, but the predictive effect of characteristics was limited. In experiment 2, the elaboration of characteristics of the protagonist had greater effect on production of the predictive inference about the behavior of the protagonist. In experiment 3, there were four sentences between the characteristics and the specific circumstance sentence. The four sentences not only made characteristics enter long-term memory, but also can't be added to the former situation model. The result suggested that readers reactivated the characteristics from the long-term memory and applied them to predict behavior of protagonist in a specific circumstance. The results of experiment 3 suggested that resonance reactive processes can happen between different situation models.