Reports on four experiments on how differences in utterance relations influence understanding anaphors, that is, devices that refer back to previously mentioned words or concepts in a discourse. Findings suggest that readers may selectively keep information available if it is likely to be needed for interpreting subsequent input. (SED)

We investigate the planning of cause and consequence in language production by examining participants' continuations to discourse fragments in four experiments. Our studies indicate how the content of the continuation, and the association between the continuation and prior text, are influenced by the nature of prior discourse. People tend to…

Discourse context may affect comprehension of a word in a text by facilitating lexical access or by facilitating integration of the target concept with the preceding text. In two experiments, we used eye tracking measures to examine contextual influence on the integration of role fillers in scripted narratives. In both experiments, context had an…

Presents a psycholinguistic analysis of the development of writing skills and reports a developmental study of knowledge effects in writing. A theoretical framework decomposes the requisite knowledge into three main components: (1) generalized, high-level problem-solving plans, (2) content, and (3) discourse. (Author/SED)