“Distinguish Inference from Assumption — inference is earned, assumption is guessed.”
Why This Ritual Matters
Reading comprehension errors often come disguised as understanding. You finish a passage feeling confident about what it means, only to discover later that you read your expectations into the text rather than extracting what the author actually wrote. The culprit is usually an assumption masquerading as an inference.
The distinction is fundamental to reasoning logic. An inference is a conclusion you can defend with evidence from the text itself — specific words, phrases, patterns, or implications that support your interpretation. An assumption is a belief you brought to the text from elsewhere: prior knowledge, cultural expectations, personal biases, or simply what “seems obvious.” Assumptions aren’t necessarily wrong, but they aren’t earned from the reading either.
This matters because assumptions are invisible to the person making them. They feel like reasonable conclusions precisely because they align with what we already believe. Developing the logical discipline to distinguish inference from assumption means learning to see your own cognitive shortcuts — and to question them.
Today’s Practice
As you read today, pause after each significant conclusion you draw. For each one, ask: “What in this text supports this?” If you can point to specific evidence, you’re likely making an inference. If you find yourself saying “it’s just obvious” or “that’s how these things usually work,” you’re likely making an assumption.
Keep a simple two-column log: one column for conclusions you can trace to textual evidence, another for conclusions that come from elsewhere. Don’t judge either column — just notice the pattern.
How to Practice
- Apply the “show me” test. For every conclusion, ask: “Can I point to the specific words that support this?” If yes, it’s probably an inference. If not, examine whether you’re assuming.
- Check for familiarity bias. Conclusions that feel obvious or comfortable are often assumptions. The brain confuses “this matches what I expect” with “this is what the text says.”
- Trace the chain. For inferences, you should be able to explain the logical steps from text to conclusion. If you can’t articulate the chain, you may be jumping to an assumption.
- Consider alternatives. Could the text support a different interpretation? If other readings are equally plausible, you may be selecting based on assumption rather than evidence.
- Note the gaps. What doesn’t the text say? Assumptions often fill in information that the text leaves open. Awareness of gaps is the first step to noticing when you’re filling them.
Consider a detective examining a crime scene. There’s a broken window, muddy footprints, and an open safe. The detective might infer that someone entered through the window — the broken glass and footprints provide evidence. But if the detective assumes the intruder was a man because “burglars usually are,” that’s an assumption without scene evidence. Good detectives, like good readers, know the difference. They follow evidence chains and flag when they’re filling gaps with expectations. The same discipline applies to reading: trace what you can prove from the text, and acknowledge when you’re supplying the rest.
What to Notice
Pay attention to how quickly conclusions form. Assumptions tend to arrive instantly, feeling like recognition rather than reasoning. Inferences usually involve a moment of work — connecting evidence, considering implications, building toward a conclusion. If understanding feels effortless, you may be assuming rather than inferring.
Notice also your emotional response to challenges. When someone questions an assumption, it often feels like a personal attack — because the assumption is part of your worldview, not something you derived from the text. When someone questions an inference, you can respond with evidence. Your emotional reaction to challenges often reveals which type of conclusion you’re defending.
The Science Behind It
Cognitive science distinguishes between “bottom-up” processing (building understanding from textual evidence) and “top-down” processing (applying prior knowledge and expectations to interpret text). Both are necessary — pure bottom-up reading would be impossibly slow, and readers routinely use context and background knowledge to fill gaps efficiently.
The problem is when top-down processing operates invisibly, replacing textual evidence with pre-existing beliefs. Research on confirmation bias shows that readers tend to notice and remember information that confirms what they already believe while filtering out contradictory evidence. Developing awareness of this tendency is the first step toward more disciplined reasoning logic.
Connection to Your Reading Journey
Throughout October, you’ve been building interpretation skills — learning to read between the lines, to detect subtext, to infer what texts imply without stating. Today’s ritual adds a crucial check to those skills: the ability to distinguish between meaning you’ve extracted from the text and meaning you’ve imported into it.
This distinction will serve you in every reading context. Academic texts require evidence-based interpretation. Professional documents demand accurate understanding without projection. Even fiction benefits from noticing when you’re responding to what the author wrote versus what you expected them to write. The logical discipline of separating inference from assumption makes all your interpretation skills more reliable.
Today I noticed an assumption I was making: __________. When I looked for textual evidence, I found __________. This made me realize __________.
What types of assumptions do you tend to make while reading? Are there particular topics, genres, or situations where you’re more likely to read your expectations into the text?
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