When Prospective Information Conflicts with Current Information

We examined the impact of prospective information on the processing of information occurring within the present timeline of narrative stories. Participants read target sentences that were consistent with events occurring within a protagonist's present timeline but inconsistent with events in the protagonist's future. When prospective information was readily available and/or received strong contextual support, processing difficulties were immediate, (i.e. they occurred on the target sentence). When the prospective information was backgrounded and/or not supported with additional contextual information, processing disruptions were delayed until the spillover sentence. Results are discussed within memory-based theories, specifically the RI-Val model.