Effects of lifetime and fact knowledge in language comprehension

The proposal examines effects of knowledge about lifetime and of factual knowledge during language comprehension. Four experiments (2 eye-tracking experiments, 2 experiments that measure brain potentials) examine how such knowledge - conveyed via the depiction of a speaker - affects the comprehension of an ensuing (written or spoken) sentence. Such effects are virtually unexamined and of interest as a research topic since knowledge about a speaker's lifetime status (is s/he alive?) and accomplishments (e.g., in what film someone starred) is potentially less homogeneous than stereotypical knowledge (e.g., that female police officers tend to arrest criminals and not the other way around). We know that stereotypical world knowledge is rapidly and robustly applied during comprehension. Is the same true for lifetime and fact knowledge? Are such effects also rapid or rather part of later comprehension processes?