Role of expectations in sentence integration.

Three experiments examined the role of causal expectations in sentence integration. Subjects read narratives that did or did not elicit strong expectations about upcoming events (high-expectation vs. low-expectation texts). Subjects were faster to judge a target sentence to be unrelated when it followed a high-expectation text than when it followed a low-expectation text. Subjects were slower to read an unimportant, expectation-violating sentence embedded in a high-expectation text. Subjects were faster both to read and to judge an expectation-fulfilling target sentence when it followed a high-expectation text. Three models of the generation and use of expectations are considered. The results support a model in which expectations are generated selectively. Once generated, expectations become the focus of upcoming sentence integration processes such that correct expectations help and incorrect expectations interfere. A third experiment found no evidence that expectations took the form of highly specific predictions.