ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on unsettled issues about inference processes from the standpoint of one specific kind of elaborative inference: the predictive inference. It reports two experiments that investigate the activation of predictive inferences as a function of the verbs that define the consequence of the action and the semantic features of the predictive sentence. The aim of this experiment was to assess whether the difference already observed between technological texts and texts describing forces of nature mechanisms could be explained by the types of verbs conveyed in the texts. This experiment measures the influence of semantic features of the consequence verb on predictive inferences. The chapter has provided some empirical support for the hypothesis that semantic features influence the generation of predictive inferences in two different types of scientific texts. It suggests that intentionality plays an important role in the generation of predictive inferences and in the construction of the situation model of scientific texts.
