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We evaluated the process of inferential revision during text comprehension in adults. Participants with high or low working memory read short texts, in which the introduction supported two plausible concepts (e.g., 'guitar/ violin'), although one was more probable ('guitar'). There were three possible continuations: a neutral sentence, which did not refer back to either concept; a no-revise sentence, which referred to a general property consistent with either concept (e.g., '…beautiful curved body'); and a revise sentence, which referred to a property that was consistent with only the less likely concept (e.g., '…matching bow'). Readers took longer to read the sentence in the revise condition, indicating that they were able to evaluate their comprehension and detect a mismatch. In a final sentence, a target noun referred to the alternative concept supported in the revise condition (e.g., 'violin'). ERPs indicated that both working memory groups were able to evaluate their comprehension of the text (P3a), but only high working memory readers were able to revise their initial incorrect interpretation (P3b) and integrate the new information (N400) when reading the revise sentence. Low working memory readers had difficulties inhibiting the no-longer-relevant interpretation and thus failed to revise their situation model, and they experienced problems integrating semantically related information into an accurate memory representation.Keywords Revising information . Inference making . Working memory . P3a . P3b . N400Successful text comprehenders construct an integrated, coherent, and accurate mental representation of the state of affairs described by the text. The construction of this situation model requires the reader to go beyond a representation of the surface characteristics of the text by generating inferences and incorporating world knowledge from long-term memory (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978). The construction of the situation model is a dynamic process (e.g., Kintsch, 1998;McNamara & Magliano, 2009;Rapp & van den Broek, 2005); the text is processed incrementally (e.g., word by word and sentence by sentence) and, therefore, the situation model is constantly being updated as the text unfolds. As each new piece of information is processed, it must be integrated with the mental representation constructed so far. This involves monitoring for comprehension to identify when and where additional processing, such as inference generation, is necessary to ensure coherence (Kintsch, 1998;Perfetti, Stafura, & Adlof, 2013).Comprehension monitoring is the metacognitive awareness that readers have about what they are reading (Wagoner, 1983). Baker (1985) distinguished two monitoring phases: evaluation and regulation. Evaluation, more recently defined as validation (Singer, 2013), refers to the process that allows readers to detect an inconsistency or mismatch in the text (e.g., Vauras, Kinnunen, Salonen, & Lehtinen, 2008). Current evidence on this process in adult readers converges on the view that evaluation is a rou...

Regulation of thoughts and behavior requires attention, particularly when there is conflict between alternative responses or when errors are to be prevented or corrected. Conflict monitoring and error processing are functions of the executive attention network, a neurocognitive system that greatly matures during childhood. In this study, we examined the development of brain mechanisms underlying conflict and error processing with event-related potentials (ERPs), and explored the relationship between brain function and individual differences in the ability to self-regulate behavior. Three groups of children aged 4–6, 7–9, and 10–13 years, and a group of adults performed a child-friendly version of the flanker task while ERPs were registered. Marked developmental changes were observed in both conflict processing and brain reactions to errors. After controlling by age, higher self-regulation skills are associated with smaller amplitude of the conflict effect but greater amplitude of the error-related negativity. Additionally, we found that electrophysiological measures of conflict and error monitoring predict individual differences in impulsivity and the capacity to delay gratification. These findings inform of brain mechanisms underlying the development of cognitive control and self-regulation.

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