Who knows what? Propagation of knowledge among agents in a literary storyworld

摘要: Abstract A speech act in a story (e.g., ‘John said that Glenda is pregnant’) contains content (‘Glenda potentially propagated among various agents the storyworld. Knowledge propagation may spontaneously occur when acts are comprehended during reading, but our working assumption knowledge primarily occurs readers probed with ‘who knows what?’ questions. College students read literary short stories and subsequently rated whether particular characters had of information expressed acts. The ratings robustly differed agent categories: speaker ≥ addressee = side participant > overhearer out-of-scene friend disliked person acquaintance stranger. In three experiments, we investigated extent to which were affected by episodic retrieval from long-term memory, reconstruction different sources (i.e., full story, summary, character key, versus act), differences readers. explained plausibility judgments greater than retrieval. 200-word summary key robust impact on reconstructing who what, it did not go complete distance because some dimensions this judgment required story.