JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 26, 255-216 (1987) What Is the Point of Integration? The Loci of Knowledge-Based Facilitation in Sentence Processing NOEL E. SHARKEY Centre for Cognitive Science, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, England AND AMANDA J.C. SHARKEY Centre for Cognitive Science, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, England When people read a text they must construct a representation of its essential ideas and integrate them. We investigated how world knowledge facilitates this process, and exam- ined the loci of integration during sentence processing. In four experiments, we manipulated the relatedness of sentence-internal targets to preceding knowledge-based texts. In the first three experiments, no differences were observed in any sentence position except the sen- tence-final position. These results indicate that the integration of entire sentences with prior text is facilitated by active knowledge structures. Explanations in terms of associative priming, transitional probability, and the activation of anaphoric referents were ruled out. In Experiment 4 a difference was observed in the initial position between clearly unrelated control targets and knowledge-based targets. Two alternative accounts of the data are given: a sophisticated buffer model with a contextual checking mechanism, and an activation window model which is equivalent to a buffer with contextually sensitive access. D 1987 Academic Press, Inc. Whenever people read a text or a story they must construct a meaning representa- tion that contains its essential ideas and the causal relations among them. One way in which relations are formed is by using This research was funded at University of Essex by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) reference number: C 08 25 0015 and at Yale University by the Systems Development Foundation. The au- thors thank Professor Robert P. Abelson for his sup- port, Rolf Pfeifer MR for his assistance with software for the experimental and analysis programs at Yale, and D.C. Mitchell for providing experimental software (the Exmore system). We also thank Richard Sutcliffe, Arthur Graesser, and John Clapper for their comments on an earlier draft. We are also grateful to Marcel Just for his advice, and in particular for suggesting Experi- ment 2. Request for reprints should be sent to Dr. N. E. Sharkey, Centre for Cognitive Science, Depart- ment of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester C04. 3SQ, En- gland. knowledge of the causality that obtains among actions in the real world. It has even been suggested that such causal relations come in preformed scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977). Indeed, the organization of such knowledge in memory has recently been the subject of considerable investiga- tion (e.g., Abbott, Black & Smith, 1985; Barslau & Sewell, 1985; Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979; Galambos & Rips, 1982; Graesser, Gordon, & Sawyer, 1979; Haber- landt & Bingham, 1978). Much of this re- search has concentrated on the use of knowledge structures in language under- standing. The general finding is that the reading times for sentences are facilitated by preceding them with related knowledge- based materials (e.g., Bower et al., 1979; den Uyl & Van Oostendorp, 1980; Haber- landt & Bingham, 1984; Sanford & Garrod, 1981; Seifert, Robertson, & Black, 1985). 255 0749-596X/87 $3.00 Copyright 0 1987 by Academic Press. Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.