Character profiles and the activation of predictive inferences

Most evidence indicates that with supportive context, predictive inferences do become activated. The present experiments were designed to investigate whether the characteristics of the protagonist can mitigate against activation of a predictive inference, even when the immediately preceding context supports it. Participants read passages containing a detailed description of characteristics of the protagonist. The characteristics were either consistent, inconsistent, or neutral with respect to a subsequent predictive inference. This character information was followed by a context that supported the predictive inference. Experiment 1 demonstrated that predictive inferences were activated, except when they conflicted with the characteristics of the protagonist. Experiment 2 demonstrated that when an inference was activated, it was also instantiated into the representation of the text. These results are discussed in terms of the memory-based view of text processing.