Too depleted to comprehend: resource depletion impairs situation model comprehension

The goal of the present study was to examine how cognitive resource depletion impacts reading comprehension. Participants completed either a simple typing task (control condition), or an attentionally taxing typing task (depletion condition) followed by a reading comprehension task. For both vague (difficult to understand) and concrete (easy to understand) passages, resource depletion had no effect on textbase comprehension or surface form comprehension. However, resource depletion impaired situation model comprehension in vague passages, and improved situation model comprehension of concrete passages. The results provide evidence that a depletion of cognitive resources impacts readers’ ability to form a coherent situation model, and that the impact of resource depletion differs as a function of passage difficulty. We conclude that successful situation model construction is dependent on the attentional and working memory resources that are available to the reader.