This paper presents the STAR system, a system for automated narrative comprehension, developed on top of an argumentation-theoretic formulation of defeasible reasoning, and strongly following guidelines from the psychology of comprehension. We discuss the system's use in psychological experiments on story comprehension, and our plans for its broader use in empirical studies concerning wider issues of commonsense reasoning.

This report considers the problem of constructing an abstract model of story comprehension. The use of questions that go beyond the story as a test of understanding the story raises a methodological problem which is discussed in detail.