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Subject: psycoloquy.92.3.63.reading-inference-1.1.garnham (591 lines)
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The following PSYCOLOQUY target article by Alan Garnham, a critique of
McKoon & Ratcliff's analysis of inference in reading, is hereby open for
peer commentary. Please submit formal commentaries for publication to
psyc@pucc.bitnet or psyc@pucc.princeton.edu (consult Instructions
following article below  for commentary format and length information).

Note that a companion critique by Glenberg & Mathew on a related topic
is appearing as the next article in PSYCOLOQUY (posted in 2 parts):
      psycoloquy.92.3.64.reading-inference-2.1.glenberg-mathews
If you wish to comment on both, please either do so in two separate
commentaries or address your joint commentary to the closer of the two
articles (*-1 or *-2) and cross-reference the other. The authors will
reply separately in their own thread-lines (*-1.*.garnham or
*-2.*.glenberg-mathews), with cross-references where necessary.

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psycoloquy.92.3.63.reading-inference-1.1.garnham  Sunday, December 13, 1992
ISSN 1055-0143                    (20 paragraphs, 21 references, 515 lines)
PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)
                Copyright 1992 Alan Garnham

                MINIMALISM VERSUS CONSTRUCTIONISM: A FALSE
                DICHOTOMY IN THEORIES OF INFERENCE DURING READING

                Alan Garnham
                Laboratory of Experimental Psychology
                University of Sussex
                Brighton BN1 9QG, UK
                +44-273-678337
                alang@epunix.sussex.ac.uk

0.0 ABSTRACT: McKoon and Ratcliff (1992) argue for a "minimalist"
theory of inference in reading, contrasting it with "constructionist"
theories, including theories based on mental or situation models.
Minimal inferences are those required for local (not global) coherence
and those based on readily available knowledge. This target article
argues that minimalism is a hedged and less testable version of an
older theory. More important, McKoon and Ratcliff mischaracterize
constructionism, failing to notice that local coherence often depends
on constructionist processes. When people do not have the knowledge
required to establish local coherence, they do not do so during
reading. The only unhedged prediction of the minimalist theory is hence
incorrect. Although a theory of inference making should be both
constructionist and approximately minimalist, a distinction must be
made between a computational theory of inference making and a
description of the mechanisms underlying our inferential abilities.

0.1 KEYWORDS: constructionism, inference, mental models, minimalism,
reading, text comprehension

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1. A crucial question for theories of inference during reading
concerns how to characterize the inferences people make and the
circumstances under which they make them. McKoon and Ratcliff (1992,
henceforth M&R) present a minimalist theory of inference and
contrast it with constructionist theories. According to minimalism, two
kinds of inference are made automatically during reading: those that
establish local coherence and those based on readily available
information. Other inferences can be made, but only if the reader
engages in nonautomatic strategic processing. The minimalist position
has much to recommend it; and it is true that most, if not all,
constructionist theories have been nonminimalist. I argue, however,
that the contrast between minimalism and constructionism one is a false
one, since constructionist processes play an essential role in
inferences that are made automatically, according to minimalism. M&R's
failure to recognize this point results in inadequacies in their
account of inference making and renders incorrect the only unequivocal
prediction from their theory: that inferences necessary to establish
local coherence will be made during reading.

2.0 MINIMALISM: A NEW VERSION OF AN OLD IDEA

2.1. Minimalism is a version of a theory that is at least fifteen years
old: that the only inferences made as a text is read are those that are
necessary to establish a coherent interpretation (an idea mooted, in
various forms, by, for example, Corbett & Dosher, 1978; Dosher &
Corbett, 1982; Singer, 1980; Thorndyke, 1976). According to this
theory, inferences that are merely elaborative are made, not when a
text is initially processed, but only if they are subsequently
required, for example, to answer either a question posed by an
experimenter or one arising in the mind of the reader. The minimalist
theory places one further restriction on the inferences it claims are
made in comprehension, but it hedges the claims of the older theory in
two ways. The restriction is that only inferences establishing local
cohesive links are made automatically. Even if further inferences are
needed to establish global coherence (by connecting "more globally
separated pieces of information," M&R: p. 442), they are not made.
(The hedges are described in 2.3 - 2.4 below.)

2.2. Although the idea that global coherence is not automatically
established strikes many people as counterintuitive, there is
considerable evidence that inconsistencies between different parts of a
text are not noticed, even by relatively sophisticated readers (e.g.,
Baker, 1989). Furthermore, M&R present new evidence that global
coherence is not automatically established during reading.
Nevertheless, some global inferences may be made. For example,
Gernsbacher and Robertson (1992) showed that fictional characters'
emotional states are readily inferred. Garnham and Oakhill (1992) argue
that although such inferences are necessary for a coherent
interpretation of a text, they do not establish local links. Thus, to
understand a text about Joe, who gets fired from a job because his
friend Tom steals money from the till while Joe is in the storeroom,
one must infer that Tom is likely to feel guilty. This inference
does not link any two adjacent clauses of the text, however.
Gernsbacher and Robertson's findings are not necessarily inconsistent
with minimalism. Inferences about emotional states could be based on
readily available knowledge, but the mundane nature of the story
does not guarantee that the information will be readily available. To
explain well established findings about instrumental inferences, M&R are
forced to conclude that the information that coffee is usually stirred
with a spoon is ordinarily not readily available. Unfortunately for
M&R, this type of knowledge often underlies inferences that establish
local coherence, even when it is not explicit in the text, for example,
in:

        Mary stirred her coffee. The spoon was dirty and tainted it.

2.3. The first of M&R's two hedges is that their theory describes only
inferences that are made "automatically" as a text is read. This hedge
generalizes the widely accepted idea that elaborative inferences can be
made subsequent to the initial reading of a text. According to M&R,
nonminimal inferences may also be made during reading if readers
engage in nonautomatic strategic processing, either for reasons of
their own, or in following experimental instructions. These inferences,
however, should be distinguishable from minimal inferences using the
normal criteria for differentiating automatic and strategic processes.
Such nonautomatic inferences are sometimes needed to establish local
coherence (M&R: p. 441), and M&R strongly imply, though they do not
state, that such inferences are made. Furthermore, their Experiment 2
suggests that such inferences resolve local "inconsistencies" in texts,
such as buying yoghurt and grapefruit as an alternative to riding a
bike. Thus, if local coherence is "automatically" established (M&R:
Abstract), a different sense of "automatic" (roughly, "as a matter of
course") must be intended, rather than the one in which automatic
contrasts with strategic. Indeed, despite their claims, the notion of
automaticity does no real work for M&R. The crucial determinants of
inference making are, on the one hand, the establishment of local
coherence and, on the other hand, ready availability of knowledge,
which can underlie elaboration. Furthermore, for inferences that
establish local coherence, M&R fail to consider the possibility that
the relevant knowledge is not only not readily available, but not
available at all.

2.4. M&R's second hedge: An inference that would otherwise be
nonminimal can be made if it depends only on "information that is
quickly and easily available" (1992: p. 440). This is not a new idea,
but it is problematic. In some instances, independent considerations
may suggest what knowledge is readily available to a particular reader.
However, if such independent evidence is not available, it is all too
easy to "determine" whether knowledge is available by discovering
whether it permits an inference to be made automatically. Thus, this
second hedge reduces the testability of M&R's theory.

2.5. M&R could justifiably argue that the aspects of their theory that
make it less testable are those that make it more realistic. The idea
that inference making is (at least partly) a strategically controlled
process and depends on what knowledge is readily available, which may
vary from person to person, helps make sense of conflicting results in
the literature. What is more damaging to M&R's position is their
incorrect characterization of constructionist processes and their
failure to recognize that such processes may be implicated in
inferences that, according to the theory, are minimal.

3.0 WHAT IS CONSTRUCTIONISM?

3.1. According to M&R, constructionist theories, particularly those
based on mental or situational models, hold that "the mental
representation of a text automatically specifies, in some complete way,
the real-life situation described by the text" (p. 458). However, the
notion of a "life-like" representation is too vague to be useful, and
the notion of a "complete" representation is incoherent. A complete
representation implies elaborative (nonminimalist) inferences, because
texts do not describe situations completely. However, the idea that a
representation of a situation can be both complete and finite (and,
hence, a viable candidate for a mental entity) cannot be sustained.
Situations can be described at increasingly fine levels of details and
in increasingly bizarre and irrelevant ways. There is no end to the
ways in which a representation can be elaborated, and no sense in which
it is ever complete. Mental models of situations are intended to be
incomplete, as is apparent from the formal semantic theories that have
influenced our own version of mental models theory (Garnham, 1987;
Johnson-Laird, 1983). In both discourse representation theory (Kamp,
1981) and situation semantics (Barwise & Perry, 1983), text
representations are partial submodels of an overall model of the world
-- submodels because they do not represent all of the world, only part
of it, and partial because they contain only partial information about
the bit of the world they do represent: in the first instance, those
aspects that are explicitly mentioned.

3.2. In contrast to M&R, Bransford, Barclay and Franks (1972;
henceforth BB&F), with whom M&R concede that the constructionist
position originates, identified the two crucial aspects of that
position. The first is that the representation of the content of a
(descriptive) text is a representation of the situation in the world
that the text is about ("a wholistic description of the overall
situation linguistically communicated", BB&F: p. 202). The second is that,
in constructing this representation, information that is explicit in
the text (almost always) has to be combined with relevant knowledge
about the world from long-term memory, either specific knowledge about
particular people, places and things, or general knowledge about kinds
of people, places and things ("one is assumed to use linguistic
information in conjunction with previous knowledge to construct
semantic descriptions" BB&F: p. 207).

3.3. The first aspect of the constructionist position originally
distinguished it from the view that sentence comprehension results in
mental representations of the linguistic form of sentences.
Constructionism claims that the elements of text representations stand
for things in the world (people, objects, places and so on), not for
linguistic entities. "Wholistic" representations are created by
integrative processes that link information from different parts of the
text. More specifically, information from the clause currently being
read must be incorporated into the model of the text built so far. The
information initially extracted from a clause is what is explicit in
that clause. When this information is integrated into the developing
mental model of the text, local links are usually established (but see
below). Because making local links is a constructive process, it may
add to the representation information that is not explicit in the text.
M&R claim (p. 442) that "a constructed representation of the situation
described by a text would not necessarily include aspects of the
situation that were mentioned in close proximity." On one reading, this
claim is inconsistent with M&R's idea that constructed representations
are complete. More important, it misses the point that links between
adjacent clauses are a primary factor in determining whether a text is
well-written (see e.g. Garnham, Oakhill & Johnson-Laird, 1982).

3.4. The focus, in the first instance, on information that is
explicitly presented, is a crucial part of the mental-models theory. It
is also important in the mental-models account of reasoning. It forms
the basis of an explanation of many biases and errors in reasoning that
arise because people focus on what is stated in the premises and fail
to consider possibilities that are not explicitly mentioned.

4.0 MINIMAL INFERENCES IN CONSTRUCTIVE PROCESSING

4.1. Both the original discussion by BB&F, and many subsequent
discussions, exemplify constructive processes by elaborative inference
making. Thus, inferences about the relative positions of the turtles,
fish and log in the famous BB&F sentences:

        Three turtles rested on/beside a floating log
        and a fish swam beneath it/them.

are not necessary to establish local coherence, and they are not
necessarily based on readily available knowledge. (The information that
would have to be readily available, however, is not "that the fish
swam under the log" [M&R: p. 441]. M&R confuse the inferred information
with the information on which the inference is based, in this case the
explicit information in the sentence, together with general knowledge
about spatial relations and about the relative sizes of turtles, fish,
and logs.) Inferences to default case fillers, or highly probable ones,
such as instruments (e.g. knives for cutting steaks, Paris & Lindauer,
1976), which are paradigm cases of constructive inferences, are not
usually necessary to establish coherence, either.

4.2 Nevertheless, many of the most straightforward inferences that do
establish local coherence are constructive. For example, the most
famous bridging inference in the psycholinguistic literature is one in
which the background knowledge that picnic supplies in California often
include beer licenses involves an otherwise unexpectedly definite
reference to beer ("The beer was warm.") following a reference to
picnic supplies ("We checked the picnic supplies.") (Haviland & Clark,
1974).  Similarly, in establishing the referent of the pronoun "he" in:

        John blamed Bill because he spilled the milk.

it is necessary to use the information that spilling milk is usually
undesirable, and knowledge about the circumstances under which one
person blames another. Whether this information is used during reading
is, of course, an empirical question. But if it is not, M&R's claims
about local coherence are incorrect. In any case, inferences that are
minimal according to M&R's definition, depend on constructive
processing. Hence their contrast between a minimalist and a
constructionist theory is an untenable one. Ironically, M&R discuss
both bridging inferences and anaphoric processing, but the bridging
inference they present (1992: p. 444) is a much more difficult one that
may well not be made; and their discussion of anaphoric processing
(1992: pp. 443-444) fails to consider either the different kinds of
information that may be needed to resolve an anaphor or where that
information comes from (text or long-term memory). M&R's presentation
suggests that most local links are established automatically (i.e.
nonstrategically). However, more careful consideration suggests that
almost all local links depend on background knowledge that is not
readily available. If the information that spoons are used to stir
coffee is not readily available, surely the information that picnic
supplies can contain beer is not.

5.0 ARE "MINIMAL" INFERENCES ALWAYS MADE?

5.1. The need for constructive processes in making "minimal" inferences
emphasizes the complexity of inference making. In particular, like most
previous authors, M&R fail to distinguish between a textual signal that
an inference is needed to make a (local) link, and the use of
background knowledge (and hence constructive processes) to make the
link. Garnham and Oakhill (1992) pointed out this distinction in
discussing the findings of Noordman and Vonk (1992). In one experiment,
Noordman and Vonk included sentences with two clauses linked by the
subordinating conjunction "because" in short texts. This conjunction
indicates a causal, inferential or reason-based relation between the
information in the two clauses. Recognizing the existence of this
relation is a part of establishing the local coherence of the text, but
one part only. To form a coherent representation it is also necessary
to determine the particular connection between the two pieces of
information. For example, in one of Noordman and Vonk's texts the
crucial sentence was:

        Chlorine compounds are frequently used as propellants,
        because they do not react with other substances.

The link between the two clauses depends on knowledge about propellants
and why they ought to be inert. Noordman and Vonk's texts were chosen
so that ordinary subjects were unlikely to have the background knowledge
that lay behind the inferences. By comparing texts in which this
knowledge was made explicit before the crucial sentence with those in
which it was not, Noordman and Vonk showed that their subjects did not
carry out inferential work as they read that sentence. However, if they
were later asked to verify the information underlying the inference, it
was at that point that they made the inference. These findings falsify
the one unequivocal prediction from M&R's minimalist theory: that
inferences necessary to establish local coherence are made as a matter
of course. The way this prediction is falsified further emphasizes the
contribution of constructive processes to minimal inferences.

5.2. In Noordman and Vonk's passages the information underlying the
inferences can in principle be recovered during reading, on the
assumption that the texts are both coherent and true. If chlorine
compounds are used as propellants because they do not react with other
compounds, inertness must be a desirable property of propellants.
However, although this information is potentially available to readers,
they do not appear to derive it. In a subsequent experiment, Noordman
and Vonk used an expert-novice paradigm (and a different set of
passages, about economic matters). They found that experts, for whom
the knowledge underlying the inferences should have been readily
available, did carry out inferential work as they read sentences with
linguistically signaled links. This finding is consistent with M&R's
idea that inferences based on readily available information will be
made. Nevertheless, Noordman and Vonk's findings considerably
complicate a theory of inference making. Competent readers certainly
recognize linguistic signals of how the parts of a text are linked.
They know from knowledge of their language that "because" signals
causal, inferential and reason-based relations, "but" contrastive
relations, and the use of a definite noun phrase that its referent
should be given information. But recognizing that there is a link is
not the same as knowing what underlies it. Fleshing out such links
typically requires the use of background knowledge and, hence,
constructive processes.

6.0 TOWARD A MENTAL MODELS THEORY OF INFERENCE IN READING

6.1. Mental-models theorists must be constructionists, but they may
also be reconstructed minimalists. Indeed, they might hold a stronger
view than M&R: that inferences are only made if they are both necessary
to establish local coherence and based on readily available
information. If the information is not readily available, the inference
is not made. Nevertheless, many mental models theorists are
nonminimalists, and one reason they appear to favor on-line elaboration
is because of their focus on spatial inference. The spatial domain is
ideal for distinguishing between a representation of what is described
(a spatial layout of some kind) and the language used to describe it.
However, this feature of the spatial domain further complicates an
analysis of inference making. M&R argue that some of the results
suggesting automatic spatial inferences have alternative explanations.
Nevertheless, the results concerning one-dimensional spatial arrays
(e.g. Potts, 1974) are firmly established, so a few comments on spatial
inference are in order.

6.2. Since a representation of a spatial array is far removed
structurally from the sentences used to describe the array, it is not
obvious what inferences are encoded in it. And although M&R, with their
notion of partially encoded inferences (see p. 458 for discussion), are
among the few authors to have broken away from an oversimplistic view
of inference making, they still characterize an inference as an encoded
proposition (p. 463). In the representation of a spatial array,
however, propositions that might be used to describe the array are not
directly represented. To express something that might be characterized
as "an inference encoded in the array" it is necessary to generate a
sentence (expressing a proposition) from the array, but this process
may itself contribute to the making of the inference. Such
complications are partly what I had in mind when I argued (Garnham,
1989: pp. 168-169) that inferences might be thought of as implicitly
encoded into representations of spatial arrays, and that processes at
encoding, storage and retrieval might all contribute to a single
inference. The notion of "making an inference" suggests that there is
some moment at which an inference is made, but this suggestion is
misleading. Furthermore, if there is no moment at which an inference is
made, the question of whether it is made automatically needs to be
reformulated.

6.3. Given the complexity of spatial inferences, it is not surprising
that M&R's analysis applies more directly to simple cases, such as
inferences about case fillers, where the difference between information
encoded into a mental model and a linguistic expression that can be
used to express that information is less apparent. Nevertheless, even
"simple" case filling inferences may depend on processes with complex
temporal properties. For example, in Garnham (1982) I presented an
"omission theory" of case filling inferences in which highly probable
or default case fillers are omitted from a representation of content
both when they are implicit and when they are explicit. In either case,
they can be reconstructed from an adequate representation of the
content of a text, if required. In the omission theory, unlike in the
theory that highly plausible case fillers are immediately inferred,
there is no single moment at which an inference is made. These theories
are difficult to distinguish, however, because they make identical
predictions in many cases (Garnham, 1982). In the omission theory, the
question about what inferences are made "during reading" is beside the
point.

6.4. I have argued that minimalist and constructionist theories of
inference making are not only compatible with one another, but that a
viable theory of inference making will definitely be constructionist
and is likely to be approximately minimalist. Indeed, I have previously
argued (Garnham, 1982, 1989) for an account of inference making within
the mental-models framework (said by M&R to be constructionist and
hence antiminimalist), one that might be described as a modified
minimalist theory. The idea that a theory of inference making should be
an amalgam of minimalist and constructionist ideas is misleading,
however. In their version of minimalism, M&R draw on notions such as
automatic versus strategic processing. These notions describe
properties of the processes that underlie inference making. They are
quite inappropriate for analyzing what it is to make an inference.
Yet it is just such analytic questions, both in the domain of
inference making and in other domains such as anaphoric processing,
that the mental-models theory is intended to answer. Indeed, the older
notion of minimalism, defined in terms of a distinction between
inferences necessary to establish a coherent interpretation of a text
and those that are merely elaborative, is part of an analytic
description of inference.

6.5 In Marr's (1982) terminology, the mental-models theory would aim to
provide a computational theory of the making of inferences: a theory of
what constitutes inference making and why people make the inferences
they do. Notions such as automatic versus strategic processing are
appropriate for describing mechanisms at the abstract level of
algorithm and representation. As for implementation (Marr's third
level), we know virtually nothing about the neural mechanisms that
underlie inference making. It is true that many mental models theorists
have emphasized not just constructive processing, which is an essential
part of text comprehension, but on-line elaborative inference making.
However, on-line elaboration is not an essential part of a
mental-models theory of text comprehension (as M&R themselves admit at
one point, p. 458). The essential aspects of such a theory are (1) the
idea that the representation of the content of a text is a
representation of the part of the world that the text is about, not of
the linguistic expressions used to describe it, (2) a conceptually
coherent account of the processes that establish the reference of
linguistic expressions, and (3) an emphasis on the incremental nature
of the construction of text representations.

REFERENCES

Baker, L. (1989). Metacognition, comprehension monitoring, and the
adult reader. Educational Psychology Review, 1, 3-38.

Barwise, J. & Perry, J. (1983). Situations and attitudes. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.

Bransford, J.D., Barclay, J.R. & Franks, J.J. (1972). Sentence
memory: A constructive versus interpretive approach. Cognitive
Psychology, 3, 193-209.

Corbett, A.T. & Dosher, B.A. (1978). Instrument inferences in
sentence encoding. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17,
479-491

Dosher, B.A. & Corbett, A.T. (1982). Instrument inferences and verb
schemata. Memory and Cognition, 10, 531-539.

Garnham, A. (1982). Testing psychological theories about inference
making. Memory and Cognition, 10, 341-349.

Garnham, A. (1987). Mental models as representations of discourse and
text. Chichester: Ellis Horwood.

Garnham, A. (1989). Inference in language understanding: What, when,
why and how. In R. Dietrich & C.F. Graumann (Eds.), Language
processing in social context. (pp.153-172). Amsterdam: North Holland.

Garnham, A & Oakhill, J.V. (1992). Discourse representation and text
processing from a "mental models" perspective. Language and Cognitive
Processes, 7, 193-204.

Garnham, A., Oakhill, J.V., & Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1982). Referential
continuity and the coherence of discourse. Cognition, 11, 29-46.

Gernsbacher, M.A. & Robertson, R.R.W. (1992). Knowledge activation
versus sentence mapping when representing fictional characters'
emotional states. Language and Cognitive Processes, 7, 353-371.

Haviland, S.E & Clark, H.H. (1974). What's new: Acquiring new
information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning
and Verbal Behavior, 13, 512-521.

Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science
of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Kamp, H. (1981). A theory of truth and semantic representation. In J.
Groenendijk, T. Janssen & M. Stokof (Eds.), Formal methods in the
study of language (pp. 255-278). Amsterdam: Mathematical Centre
Tracts.

Marr, D. (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human
representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco:
Freeman

McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R. (1992). Inference during reading.
Psychological Review, 99, 440-466.

Noordman, L.G.M. & Vonk, W. (1992). Reader's knowledge and the
control of inference in reading. Language and Cognitive Processes, 7,
373-391.

Paris, S.G. & Lindauer, B,K. (1976). The role of inferences in
children's comprehension and memory for sentences. Cognitive
Psychology, 8, 217-227.

Potts, G.R. (1974). Storing and retrieving information about ordered
relationships. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 103, 431-439.

Singer, M. (1980). The role of case-filling inferences in the
comprehension of brief passages. Discourse Processes, 3, 185-201.

Thorndyke, P.W. (1976). The role of inferences in discourse
comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 15,
437-446.

AUTHOR NOTE: My work on mental models has been supported by ESRC grant C
0023 2439 "Mental models and the interpretation of anaphora". Thanks to
Jane Oakhill for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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