# On the Persistence of Discourse Predictions: The Facilitative Effect of Discourse Markers Diminishes in the Presence of Intervening Material

## TL;DR

This study explores how long readers remember expectations set by phrases like 'On the one hand' when processing later phrases like 'On the other hand', finding that intervening material weakens this effect.

## Contribution

The study reveals that the facilitative effect of discourse markers diminishes with intervening material in real-time processing.

## Key findings

- Intervening material slightly weakens the effect of OT1H on offline discourse representations.
- Intervening material diminishes the facilitative effect of OT1H in online processing.
- Discourse dependencies are fine-grained but not unbounded in real-time processing.

## Abstract

The current study investigates for how long readers maintain expectations about an upcoming discourse relation. We use the pair of discourse markers On the one hand (OT1H) and On the other hand (OTOH) to test the facilitative effect of OT1H on the processing of OTOH and the sensitivity of this effect to the presence of intervening material. Results from a story continuation study indicate that intervening material slightly weakens the effect of OT1H on offline representations of the discourse. Results from a self-paced reading and two eye-tracking studies suggest that the presence of intervening material diminishes the facilitative effect of OT1H in online processing. These results support memory-based models of processing by showing that discourse dependencies, while they are built as fine-grained representations, are not unbounded in real-time processing.