Costs result from the mental effort required by inferences. Adding the cost-benefit continuum complicates matters, much as it has in psychophysics and in research on speeded performance. For example, rather than asking what the constraints are on inferences in reading, investigators would ask what the constraints are for a given point on the cost-benefit continuum. Part of the appeal of minimalism lies in the minimal theoretical overhead used to account for a corpus of data. It has proven to be a fertile stimulant for research as well.
Mental models contribute to foregrounding during text comprehension.
The effects of causal cohesion on comprehension and memory. Inference during reading. Towards a process model of inference generation in text comprehension. Comprehension processes in reading. On the control of inferences in text understanding.