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The Influence Of Attentional Control On Hemispheric Processing Of Predictive Inferences, Michael Christopher Shutzenhofer

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the effects of attentional control on the hemispheric processing of predictive inferences during reading. Participants read texts that were either strongly or weakly constrained towards a predictive inference and performed a lexical decision task to inference-related target words presented to the right or left visual field— hemisphere. Facilitation for strongly constrained predictive inferences was greater than facilitation for weakly constrained predictive inferences in both hemispheres. Readers with high attentional control showed significant facilitation for strongly constrained inferences in the both hemispheres, but only showed significant facilitation for weakly constrained inferences in the left hemisphere. Readers with low …