An Exploration of Media Differences on Bridging Inferences

We experience narratives in different media, such as text and picture stories. While some research suggests that inference generation operates similarly across media, few studies have directly compared inference generation across media. This study investigated whether there are differences in the generation of bridging inferences for narratives presented in either texts or pictures. Participants saw wordless pictures or text versions of the same stories, and the presence of a coherence gap was manipulated within them. When there was a coherence gap, a bridging inference was required. Experiment 1 involved participants doing think aloud protocols and Experiments 2a and 2b measured processing time. The results showed an advantage of pictures for generating bridging inferences in the think-aloud task, but no difference between media in the context of processing time data. These findings suggest that differences in comprehension may be influenced by contextual factors, such as the activity that one engages (e.g., think aloud or reading silently) in when processing narratives.