The effects of visuospatial working memory on older adults’ bridging inference processing in visual narrative comprehension

ABSTRACT

This experiment employed viewing time methods to investigate the effects of individual differences in visuospatial working memory (VWM) on the processing of older adults’ bridging inferences in the understanding of visual narratives. The results showed that older adults could make bridging inferences in visual narrative processing, and that VWM had no significant effect on the generation of older adults’ bridging inferences in visual narrative comprehension. The findings of this study have the potential to enrich and advance the theories and models related to discourse comprehension and its inference processing, and they would have important implications for using visual media to facilitate training in inference processing.

Acknowledgments

We thank the individuals who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Planning Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences in China [18BYY088], the Double First-Class Disciplines Major Project of Beijing Foreign Studies University [2022SYLZD008], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Beijing Foreign Studies University [2022JX020] and the Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project of Zhejiang Province [22JCXK14YB].