THE INFLUENCE OF TYPES OF CHARACTER ON PROCESSING BACKGROUND INFORMATION IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

The background sentence The air was cold and clammy depicts setting in formation which may or may not be of significance to a given character in a narrative. We tested the hypothesis that such information is pro cessed with respect to the main character in a narrative rather than w ith respect to a secondary character. In Experiment I, subjects making attributions of awareness of such background states were more likely to attribute such awareness to main than to secondary characters. In E xperiment 2, using self-paced reading, we showed that such information is more important for main than for secondary characters during readi ng. Thus, unattached background information is processed with respect to main characters. This bias provides a source of control over the pr ocessing necessary to establish a coherent representation during the r eading of narratives. Experiment 3 eliminated the possibility that the effects were due to generally shallower processing of sentences cente red on secondary characters.