Causal Linking during Text Comprehension

Abstract

To study the linking of causally related events during reading, sets of 10 to 12 sentences were prepared so each subject was presented 40 texts, 10 within each of four conditions, 2 causal and 2 noncausal, presented on a Macintosh Plus microcomputer, Each text contained a test sentence, for which reading time was registered. Mean reading time was shorter for the two causal conditions than for the two noncausal conditions. It was concluded that during comprehension of text readers engage in causal linking.