Table 1.

Example of stimuli used to assess generation and maintenance of the inference “sweep.”

Condition	Sample story
Recenta	Jane was cleaning house on Saturday.
	She had already worked most of the day.
	Now Jane had one more task to do.
	She went to the closet and took out a broom.
	She dusted her bookshelves and then sat down to rest.
	She was glad when everything was finally done.
Distanta	Ruth was cleaning house on Saturday.
	She went to the closet and took out a broom.
	She had already cleaned most of the house.
	Now Ruth had one more task to do.
	She dusted her bookshelves and then sat down to rest.
	She was glad when everything was finally done.
Controlb	Beth was cleaning house on Thursday.
	She had already worked most of the day.
	Now Beth had one final task to do.
	She dusted her bookshelves and then sat down to rest.
	She was glad when everything was finally done.

Note. Predictive sentences are in bold; target sentences are underlined; posttarget sentences are in italics. Posttarget sentences were included only in the current study (and not in Lehman-Blake & Tompkins, 2001).

^aPrediction disconfirmed.

^bNo inference.