Memory for Discourse: The Effects of Inferences about the Speaker's Intentions.

A listener's inferences about why speakers say what they do can influence what the listener remembers. Psychologists studying memory for discourse have neglected to give attention to the source of the information to be remembered. In a study to determine what effects adding information has on remembering initial discourse, subjects listening to taped interviews seemed to alter their memories in accord with what they thought really happened, based on assumptions drawn about the speakers. Additional experiments designed to test this source brought similar results. Listeners in ordinary contexts incorporate what they know about the speaker and what they can infer about that speaker's intentions into the actual facts stored in memory. (AEA)