The effect of input direction on the processing of script statements

Three experiments are described in which input direction of a pair of script statements was manipulated. It was shown that subjects process statements faster when they were presented in a forward direction which reflects the causal dependencies between them than when they were presented in a backward direction which reverses the typical order of actions. In Experiments 1 and 2 subjects performed a relatedness judgment for pairs of script statements faster for forward than for backward pairs. In Experiment 3, where a reading and recognition task was used, target sentences were studied faster in forward than in backward pairs. The forward advantage observed in these experiments is interpreted in terms of a “Bundle” model of script representation and in terms of the causal dependency between the script actions.