Abstract: The primary focus in the study of discourse comprehension is the construction and updating of the situation model. It is generally assumed that the construction of the situation model requires the reader to maintain coherence at both the local and global levels. The maintenance of global coherence requires the reader to map incoming information onto relevant information presented earlier in the text but that is no longer available in working memory. The different views on the instantaneous reactivation of text information in long-term memory have lead to two controversial hypotheses. According to the memory-based text processing view, relevant background information becomes reactivated as a fast-acting, passive resonance process in which information in active memory sends a signal—in parallel—to the entire long-term memory. On the other hand, according to the constructionist theory, readers pursue coherent relations throughout the text and attempt to explain why actions, events, and states are mentioned in the text. According to the memory-based text processing view, the construction of the situation model is not instantaneous. However, according to the constructionist theory, readers develop and update the situation model instantaneously. In the past few years, both theories have received strong experimental support. Mo & Leng (2005) pointed out that the divergence between these two theories stems from the use of different materials in the experiments. Moreover, their research proposed the dual-processing view, which describes the focusing reading and coherent reading. Furthermore, the research tested focusing reading with goal-based text and indicated that under the control of goal-focus, the text information is constructed in a here-and-now manner. However, the time course of the construction of the situation model was not clear. The current research attempts to clarify this.
The moving window display technique was used in Experiments 1 and 2a. The eye movement technique was used in Experiment 2b. The experiments involved 126 participants (56 in Experiment 1, 42 in Experiment 2a, and 28 in Experiment 2b). The participants in Experiment 1 and 2a read 18 passages each and the participants in Experiment 2b read 15 passages. Every passage described a character who attempted to accomplish a goal. The experimental design was a single-factor (consistent vs. inconsistent vs. qualified) repeated-measures design.
The experimenters performed a repeated-measures ANOVA on the time taken to read the target sentences in Experiments 1 and 2a. The results indicated that there was a significant effect of success in target sentence 1: consistent version = qualified version < inconsistent condition. The experimenters also performed a repeated-measures ANOVA on first reading time, second reading time, total reading time, and regression times of the critical regions in Experiment 2b.
The data from the three experiments demonstrated that the construction and integration of goal-based information occurred instantaneously during the reading

Key words: goal-focus, instantaneous construction, situation model, dual-processing view