THE COURSE OF REPRESENTATION IN MEMORY DURING THE COMPREHENSION OF PARAGRAPHS

The course of the representation built in memory from a text during co mprehension of paragraphs was studied by a probe technique (immediate item recognition). Three experiments showed that response times, the m ain variable, gradually increase as a function of the lag between the probe (a word or an atomic proposition) and its target in the text. In Experiment 3 the same result was also found with a priming technique. The absence of any kick-up over the course of time was confirmed by s everal additional analyses of individual data. The results were only w eakly consistent with models assuming two distinct memory stores, in p articular a specific ''short-term memory store,'' but highly consisten t with models involving semantic activation and subsequent gradual dea ctivation.