Inferring time-dependent changes of entities during reading

The present paper adresses the question as to whether readers exploit tempo ral text information for inferring changes in properties of objects (e.g., hot chocolate becomes cold). In the experiment, readers were presented with texts in which the duration of an event described was mentioned explicitly :ly. This information was varied (e.g., two minutes / two hours) in such a way that a particular entity introduced before was likely to have changed o r not. The subsequent critical sentence described an event which matched th e critical entity either in its original state or in its new state (e.g., s till hot / cold). An analysis of the reading times of the critical sentence revealed an interaction of the two factors. This result suggests that read ers infer changes of objects from temporal text information. It remains an open question whether the inference is drawn when the temporal information is encountered or not until the object is mentioned again.