The concept of scripts in understanding stories.

Subjects listened to a series of stories based on everyday activities, such as taking a shower, which in Schank's (1975a,b) terminology have familiar scripts. Script implications, like getting undressed, either were made explicit in the story or were left implicit. Unpredictable script variables, such as the temperature of the water, were specified. On an immediate sentence recognition test, subjects detected changes in the script variables more accurately than changes in the explicitness of the script implications. After a delay, test sentences with added or deleted script implications were falsely recognized and were judged to be as familiar as test sentences with no changes. The results supported the hypothesis that the memory representation for stories includes relevant script knowledge.