What characters know: Projected knowledge and projected co-presence

What inferences do readers make about "who knows what" in narrative worlds? We introduce the concepts of projected knowledge and projected co-presence to describe circumstances in which readers infer that characters possess i nformation presented, for example, only in narration. Our experiments exami ne one type of evidence readers use to project knowledge. In Experiment 1, readers used characters' utterances as evidence to revise their judgments a bout characters; awareness information presented in the narration. Experime nt 2 established that this effect is not due to the presence of just any ut terance in the story. Experiment 3 demonstrated differential projection of knowledge for characters depending on whether they were speakers or address ees of the critical utterance. Experiment 4 suggested that readers make the se inferences with limited reflection. Experiment 5 demonstrated that reade rs' judgment times for characters' knowledge is affected by the properties of the projecting utterance. We conclude that individuals are skilled in ev aluating textual evidence to project knowledge and co-presence. (C) 2001 Ac ademic Press.