@inbook{90c34599e1d0402c8e1918bed9c20ab0,
title = "Fault-tolerant comprehension",
abstract = "When you read about a person double-lutzing off a cliff, your ability to understand what is described depends on your experience and world knowledge. Most people will at least surmise that the person is a death-defying thrill-seeker and imagine a precipice. Winter sports aficionados might peg the double-lutzer as a suicidal ice-skater, picture an icy cliff, and note that sticking the landing will be exceptionally tricky. In addition to this, a professional figure-skater might mentally simulate the process of building up speed, jumping, and completing two revolutions while airborne or recall the last time he completed a double-lutz. This example illustrates two aspects of language comprehension that we will highlight in this chapter. First, the depth of a person{\textquoteright}s understanding of a described event depends upon her experience and world knowledge. Second, as a reader{\textquoteright}s relevant knowledge decreases, his understanding of an event does not suddenly disappear, but degrades grace - fully. That is, comprehension is a fault-tolerant process in which different people with various degrees of experience understand event descriptions at different levels of depth and granularity.",
author = "Lawrence Taylor and Rolf Zwaan",
year = "2012",
month = dec,
day = "7",
doi = "10.4324/9780203095508",
language = "English",
isbn = "9781848720824",
series = "Contemporary Topics in Cognitive Neuroscience",
publisher = "Psychology Press",
pages = "145--158",
editor = "Yann Coello and Angela Bartolo",
booktitle = "Language and Action in Cognitive Neuroscience",
}