# Linguistic focus and good-enough representations -An Application of the Change-Detection Paradigm **Opening (not a real abstract):** Linguistic focus and good-enough representations: An application of the change-detection paradigm PATRICK STURT and ANTHONY J. SANFORD ANDREW STEWART and EUGENE DAWYDIAK A number of lines of study suggest that word meanings are not always fully exploited in comprehension. In two experiments, we used a text-change paradigm to study depth of semantic processing during reading. Participants were instructed to detect words that changed across two consecutive presentations of short texts. The results suggest that the full details of word meanings are not always incorporated into the interpretation and that the degree of semantic detail in the representation is a function of linguistic focus. The results provide evidence for the idea that representations are only good enough for the purpose at hand (Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002). **Authors:** [[PATRICK STURT and ANTHONY J. SANFORD]]