---
title: "Directing And Re-Directing Inference Pursuit: Extra-Textual Influences on Text Interpretation"
authors:
  - "Richard H. Granger"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/70"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/0070.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1981
pages: "354-360"
track: "INFERENCE and REASONING"
keywords:
---

# Directing And Re-Directing Inference Pursuit: Extra-Textual Influences on Text Interpretation

Richard H. Granger

*Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 354-360.

## Abstract

Understanding a text depends on a reader's ability to construct a coherent interpretation that accounts for the statements in the text. However, a given text does not always imply a unique coherent interpretation. In particular, readers can be steered away from an otherwise plausible explanation for a story by such extra-textual factors as the source of the text, the reading purpose, interruptions during reading, or repeated re-questionlng of the reader. Some of these effects have been observed in experiments in cognitive psychology (e.g., Black [1980]). This paper presents a computer program called MACARTHUR that can vary both the depth and direction of its inference pursuit in response to re-questioning, resulting in a series of markedly different interpretations of the same text.