INVESTIGATIONS OF INFERENTIAL PROCESSES IN READING - A THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL INTEGRATION

The study of inferential processes constitutes a major focus of resear ch on text comprehension. Recent research has resulted in interesting and important findings, as exemplified by the contributions in this is sue of Discourse Processes. Studies differ substantially, however, in the types of inferences that they consider and in the methodologies th at they use. As a result, it is difficult to interpret and integrate t he findings. In this article, we present a theoretical and methodologi cal framework for organizing empirical investigations of inferential p rocesses in reading. The theoretical component provides an account of the various types of inferences that have been investigated. The metho dological component, based on Jenkins' (1979) tetrahedral model of psy chological experimentation, captures the impact of methodological vari ations across studies on the meaning of the results. The framework is applied in a discussion of central issues in current research on infer ence generation in reading.