Goal coordination in narrative comprehension

Abstract

In this paper, we report two experiments in which the consequence of maintaining multiple, unrelated character goals during comprehension were studied. This is in contrast to previous work that has focused on a single goal, or multiple related goals. The results showed that the presence of active subsequent goals can diminish the availability of earlier mentioned goals, even in the absence of semantic and other relations. In contrast, the status of earlier mentioned goals does not influence the availability of subsequent goals. These results support an explanation-based view of comprehension.