Article co-authored by Jennifer Stiegler-Balfour appears in 'Language and Cognitive Processes' Journal

Jennifer Stiegler-Balfour, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, has co-authored an article titled “The role of relevance in the activation and instantiation of predictive inferences” in the peer-reviewed journal Language and Cognitive Processes.

The article outlines whether predictive inference activation is contingent upon the prior context being currently relevant to--or consistent with--the on-going discourse, an issue which is critical with respect to theories about updating of discourse representations.

In three experiments the authors showed that readers name inference concepts faster following an inference-evoking sentence than following a baseline sentence, regardless of whether the inference was consistent or inconsistent with the prior context. These results have implications for the process via which inferences are activated as well as the process governing inference instantiation.


 

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