Reading about persons: The mental representation of person descriptions

A series of 4 experiments investigated the differences in processing person information that was presented either listwise or in a text description which linked the information coherently. Evidence was found for the hypothesis that a text description enhanced Ss' memory and attributional inferences about the personality of the described person. Online measures of processing showed that the comprehension of person information was strongly facilitated in the text condition. Furthermore, the results were due to the introduction of causal connections between person attributes in the text condition. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for contemporary models of person memory and representation.