Revision of Predictive Inferences and Japanese EFL Learners' Text Comprehension Processes : A Study of Eye Movements During Reading

Abstract

Readers often make inferences about the likely outcomes of events described in the text (i.e., predictive inferences). However, these inferences are sometimes inconsistent with the following text. In this case, readers need to revise their inferences for successful comprehension. This study investigated Japanese university EFL students' text comprehension when encountering the context disconfirming their predictive inferences. In the experiment, participants read several short narratives where a predictive inference was initially induced but later disconfirmed. Participants' eye movement data were collected to examine real-time comprehension processes during reading. Participants' text memory was also assessed by a sentence recognition task after reading. The results of the recognition task showed that readers had difficulty eliminating disconfirmed predictive inferences from text memory. More importantly, eye movement analysis suggested that both higher and lower proficiency readers immediately detected inconsistencies between drawn inferences and the context disconfirming the inferences during reading; however, lower proficiency readers experienced more difficulty in integrating the disconfirming context into current comprehension. These results suggest the difficulty specific to less proficient EFL readers.