On Certain Limitations Accompanying Readers’ Interpretations of Corrections in Episodic Text

Abstract

Where information concerning an ongoing event is acquired piecemeal over time, it may become necessary to correct a particular item of information after it is first encountered. Previous work (Johnson & Seifert, 1994; Wilkes & Leatherbarrow, 1988) has shown that if the content targeted for correction is thematically salient, neither a delayed nor an immediate correction may be sufficient to suppress its influence when subjects are subsequently tested for their comprehension of the message sequence as a whole. The present experiments are aimed at clarifying the conditions under which corrections fail to achieve their intended effects. In Experiment 1, message sequences were prepared in which the correction occurred midway in the text. It was found that the pre- or post-correction status of a message had no bearing on how it was interpreted on a later test of comprehension; both types of statements were equally likely to be associated with inferences based on the discredited message. In Experiment 2 the message targeted for correction could be directly linked to only one other message in the overall sequence. Despite this reduction in the scope of the correction, illegitimate inferences based on the discredited source continued to be made during comprehension testing. These results suggest that the critical inferences were made at the time of comprehension testing and are interpreted as providing support for the minimalist stance on the incidence of on-line inferencing during normal reading.