Discourse comprehension and referential processing: effects of contextual distance and semantic plausibility on presupposition processing

The present study aimed to investigate whether contextual factors influence how a reference is processed in discourse. We used intact and violated presuppositions (PSP), triggered by a definite or indefinite noun phrase, to monitor the reference process. In one sentence set, a contextual referent was explicitly mentioned close or far from the PSP-triggering noun phrase (memory context). In another sentence set, a referent was not explicitly mentioned in the context, but an inference to a referent was either plausible or implausible due to contextual semantic relations (inference context). Participants were asked to rate the coherence of the discourse after listening to it. Our results revealed a strong influence of the temporal distance of the contextual presentation of a referent. When the referent was far in the context (memory context), PSP violations were judged to be less severe than for close referents, suggesting that they are less clearly represented in memory. Furthermore, PSP violations seemed to play a subordinate role when the semantic context provided a basis for the plausible presence of a referent (inference context). Our results suggest that discourse comprehension involves referential processes whose importance may fade with distance in memory or may be obscured by semantic contextual content.