Conducted 3 experiments with undergraduate Ss (N = 47), who learned and answered questions about 4- or 6-item linear orderings (e.g., Tom is taller than Dick who is taller than Sam, etc). Such an ordering is comprised of some adjacent pairwise relations that are necessary to the establishment of the ordering (e.g., Tom is taller than Dick, Dick is taller than Sam) and some remote relations that are deducible (e.g., Tom is taller than Sam). Reaction time (RT) to the remote relations was consistently shorter than RT to the adjacent relations. This effect reflects the operation of 2 separate factors. First, RT is very short to test sentences which begin with one of the end terms of the ordering. Second, with end term effects eliminated, RT is a simple monotonic decreasing function of inferential distance; the more remote, the shorter the RT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)