Character movement and the representation of space during narrative comprehension

Traditional research on situation models has examined the accessibility of locations and objects during narrative experiences. These studies have described a ubiquitous gradient effect: Spatial locations and objects in reader focus are more accessible than locations farther from this focus, with accessibility decreasing as a function of distance. How might readers’ expectations about character movement, beyond information about spatial locations, additionally affect this accessibility gradient? In two experiments, we investigated whether reader expectations for character movement impact the accessibility of spatial information from memory. In Experiment 1, participants read stories that described characters moving in either a unidirectional or a random pattern through a learned environment. In Experiment 2, characters moved forward in a unidirectional way or backtracked through previously explored rooms. The results suggest that reader expectations for character movement can influence the accessibility of spatial information. Such expectations play a critical role in processes of narrative comprehension.     

The metrics of spatial distance traversed during mental imagery

The authors conducted 2 experiments to study the metrics of spatial distance in a mental imagery task. In both experiments, participants first memorized the layout of a building containing 10 rooms with 24 objects. Participants then received mental imagery instructions and imagined how they walked through the building from one room to another. The authors manipulated Euclidean distance involved in these imaginary motions: Spatial distance measured in centimeters on the layout was either short or long. Independently, they varied categorical distance: The motions led through one room or two rooms. The time needed to imagine motions and response times to test probes indicated that both Euclidean distance and categorical distance affected mental imagery. The authors discuss the new finding of categorical distance effects in mental imagery and relate the results to earlier failures to find Euclidean distance effects in formally equivalent studies of narrative comprehension.     

Sentence comprehension and working memory limitation in aphasia: a dissociation between semantic-syntactic and phonological reactivation

The relation between working memory (WM) limitation and sentence comprehension was assessed in Hebrew-speaking aphasics, three conduction aphasics and three agrammatics. The study compared sentences that required different types of reactivation-syntactic-semantic reactivation, in relative clauses, and word form/phonological reactivation, in sentences with reanalysis of lexical ambiguity. The effect of phonological memory load, manipulated by number of words intervening between the activation and the reactivation, on comprehension of the two sentence types was examined. The findings were that agrammatic aphasics failed in the comprehension of object relatives but not on subject relatives irrespective of their antecedent-gap distance. Conduction aphasics, on the other hand, who showed severe WM limitation, comprehended well all types of relative clauses and were unaffected by antecedent-gap distance. The conduction aphasics failed to understand the sentences that required phonological reactivation when the phonological distance was long. These results suggest that the type of reactivation required by the sentence, as well as the type of memory overload are crucial in determining the effect of WM limitation on sentence comprehension.     

时间距离对记叙文倒叙信息表征的影响

采用移动窗口技术和探测——再认范式探讨了时间距离对记叙文倒叙信息表征的影响。本研究分为两个实验：实验1考察了在近时间距离条件下读者如何表征倒叙信息,结果发现读者会根据时间顺序,把倒叙信息整合到他们的表征中去,支持时间顺序假设;实验2考察了在远时间距离条件下读者如何表征倒叙信息,结果发现读者会根据文本叙述顺序,将倒叙信息作为背景信息整合到该事件中去,支持背景假设。上述结果表明,时间距离是影响读者如何对倒叙信息进行表征的重要因素。     

Event memory and moving in a well-known environment

Research in narrative comprehension has repeatedly shown that when people read about characters moving in well-known environments, the accessibility of object information follows a spatial gradient. That is, the accessibility of objects is best when they are in the same room as the protagonist, and it becomes worse the farther away they are see, e.g., Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, (Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 165–187, 1987). In the present study, we assessed this finding using an interactive environment in which we had people memorize a map and navigate a virtual simulation of the area. During navigation, people were probed with pairs of object names and indicated whether both objects were in the same room. In contrast to the narrative studies described above, several experiments showed no evidence of a clear spatial gradient. Instead, memory for objects in currently occupied locations (e.g., the location room) was more accessible, especially after a small delay, but no clear decline was evident in the accessibility of information in memory with increased distance. Also, memory for objects along the pathway of movement (i.e., rooms that a person only passed through) showed a transitory suppression effect that was present immediately after movement, but attenuated over time. These results were interpreted in light of the event horizon model of event cognition.     

Intelligibility and comprehension of time compressed sign language narratives

A method of time compressing visual displays was devised to assess the effects of compression on the comprehension of American sign language (ASL). Two ASL narratives were visually presented to three groups of deaf ASL users. A compression group was presented narratives compressed to 50% of the duration of the normal rates. A no-compression group was presented narratives signed at normal rates. A pause group was presented compressed narratives with blank pauses inserted so that the total time per narrative was equal to that of the no-compression versions. Following each narrative, subjects completed a written comprehension task. Comprehension in both compression and pause groups was significantly lower than in the no-compression group. Pauses did not significantly affect scores relative to compression. An additional group of deaf ASL users was presented an intelligibility task in which signs taken from the narratives were presented in isolation either with or without compression. The total number of signs correctly identified was significantly lower with compression. Decrements in comprehension were best explained as the result of cumulative decrements in sign intelligibility and not as the result of decrements in available processing time.     

阅读理解中的代词加工:先行词的距离与性别刻板印象的作用

采用眼动技术,本研究探讨了阅读理解中代词的加工机制.读者阅读包含代词的文本,代词的性别与先行词的性别刻板印象一致或违背,同时其和先行词间的距离或远或近,记录被试阅读文本的眼动轨迹.结果发现,与一致条件相比,违背条件的加工时间更长.当代词和先行词间距离较近时,一致性效应在关键代词区的反映早期加工的眼动指标上即出现,而当二者间距离较远时,一致性效应在更后的位置(代词后那一区域)出现,并且只出现在反映晚期加工的眼动指标上.此外,与远距离一致条件相比,近距离一致条件下代词后那一区域的阅读时间更长.上述结果表明,性别刻板印象以及距离在代词加工皆发挥重要作用,而且性别刻板印象产生的影响在时程上因距离的不同而不同.这一结果在一定程度上为语言理解的交互作用理论提供了证据.     

An object-based cost of visual filtering

Although evidence for object-based attention has been reported in a variety of paradigms, few studies have examined directly the relationship between efficiency in the processing of targets and the number of intervening distractors. In five experiments, observers judged whether the vertices of two relevant shapes were of the same height. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated observers' perceptual set so that identical stimulus displays were perceived as containing either intervening or flanking distractors. The observers were faster when the distractors were flanking rather than intervening between the targets. Experiments 3-5 varied the number of intervening distractors directly. The observers' response latencies correlated positively with the distractor set-size. Because the distractors were highly discriminable from the targets and the spatial separation between the targets and their interactions with the adjacent distractors were held constant, it was unlikely that the differential reaction times across the conditions were caused by lateral inhibition or response competitions from the distractors. The results suggest the existence of an object-based filtering cost. The implications of the present data for attentional selection over noncontiguous regions are also discussed.     

Interruption-similarity effects during discourse processing

We examined the effect of interruption on reading to determine if discourse processing is susceptible to similarity-based interference. Participants read pairs of passages, either one before the other (in the continuous condition) or with the sentences of the two passages interleaved (in the interruption condition). In addition, the similarity of the types of passages (narrative or expository) in a pair was manipulated. Performance was measured with self-paced reading time of the sentences and with accuracy in answering comprehension questions. In two experiments, interruption slowed the reading of text sentences; this effect of interruption was greatest when the interrupting text was of the same style as the primary text (an interruption-similarity effect). We discuss these results with respect to current models of the role of working memory in discourse processing.     

Out of sight,out of mind: Occlusion and the accessibility of information in narrative comprehension

Do readers encode the perceptual perspectives of characters during narrative comprehension? To address this question, we conducted two experiments using stories that sometimes described situations in which certain information was occluded from the protagonists’ views. We generated two related hypotheses concerning the potential impact of occlusion events on text representations. One, theevent boundary hypothesis, suggested that any salient narrative event would reduce the accessibility of prior story information. The second, theperceptual availability hypothesis, suggested that accessibility would decrease most for information no longer visible to story protagonists. In Experiment 1, the participants were slowest to respond to verification questions that asked about occluded information. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that this effect did not extend to other, nonoccluded information. These results suggest that readers encode text information from the perceptual perspective of story protagonists. This is consistent with recent perceptual symbol views of language comprehension.     

Interruption-similarity effects during discourse processing

We examined the effect of interruption on reading to determine if discourse processing is susceptible to similarity-based interference. Participants read pairs of passages, either one before the other (in the continuous condition) or with the sentences of the two passages interleaved (in the interruption condition). In addition, the similarity of the types of passages (narrative or expository) in a pair was manipulated. Performance was measured with self-paced reading time of the sentences and with accuracy in answering comprehension questions. In two experiments, interruption slowed the reading of text sentences; this effect of interruption was greatest when the interrupting text was of the same style as the primary text (an interruption-similarity effect). We discuss these results with respect to current models of the role of working memory in discourse processing.     

Inferential language processes across adolescence: A test with novel idioms

Idiom comprehension relies on the ability to draw inferences from different cues in a communication situation. Adopting a developmental perspective, we investigated how this ability changes across adolescence. To this end, we designed a computerized system that allowed us to simulate a communication situation through short videos placing participants at the center of the interaction. Four groups of participants (11, 13, 15, and adult students) performed an idiomatic expression comprehension task, in which idiom familiarity was controlled. We manipulated the idioms’ transparency (vs. opacity) and presentation (supportive narrative context inducing an idiomatic interpretation of the expression vs. nonsupportive narrative context). Analyses revealed an improvement in idiom comprehension in terms of contextual inferences but they failed to reveal any significant difference in terms of semantic inferences. This study yields fresh arguments in support of the notion that inferential ability based on context continues to develop beyond childhood.     

Temporal order relations in language comprehension

The role of temporal orientation (chronological or reverse) and chronological distance (close, intermediate, or distant) in general event knowledge on language comprehension was examined. Experiment 1 used a relation-recognition paradigm in which the comprehension of a target event could be facilitated or disrupted by the temporal orientation implied by the prior information. Experiments 2 and 3 used a sentence-probe-recognition paradigm in which the temporal orientation, the stimulus onset asynchrony, and the chronological distance between the sentence event and the probe event were manipulated. The results demonstrated that readers used temporal information conveyed by their knowledge to construct situation models while comprehending sentences. The internal temporal dimension appeared to be directional and reflected the chronological distance between everyday events.     

Object-specific function,geometry, and the comprehension of in and on

Three experiments are reported which examined the relative effects of geometry and object-specific function on the comprehension of the spatial prepositions in and on. The first experiment manipulated the height of a located object on top of a pile of other objects in containers which were primarily containers of solids (e.g., a suitcase) or liquids (e.g., an aquarium). The association between located object and reference object was also varied (by using different types of objects as located objects). In was found to be more appropriate to describe the same object in containers of solids compared to containers of liquids, although no effects of located object association were found. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated similar variables with supporting surfaces rather than containers, and examined the effects of functional control on the comprehension of on. The studies provide evidence for the importance of functional relations on the comprehension of on. In addition effects of located object association were found, but only when there was no clear evidence for the absence or presence of functional control. The results are discussed in relation to the differential effects of object knowledge on the comprehension of spatial prepositions.     

空间转换在记叙文阅读情境模型建构中的作用

采用探测词和事件分割范式探讨了空间转换与事件转换分离的情况下, 空间转换在记叙文情境模型建构中的作用。实验1a重复前人研究, 探讨空间转换对阅读时间和情境模型更新的影响, 并验证在空间转换对情境模型的影响的研究中, 采用多指标探测范式的合理性。实验1b探讨在空间转换与事件转换相分离的条件下, 空间转换对情境模型更新的影响; 实验2a探讨空间转换对事件分割的影响, 并验证在空间转换对情境模型的影响的研究中, 采用事件分割范式的合理性; 实验2b探讨空间转换与事件转换相分离的条件下, 空间转换对事件分割的影响, 从而验证空间转换对情境模型更新的影响。结果表明, 当空间转换与事件转换相分离时, 不引起情境模型的更新, 事件单元是建构记叙文心理表征的核心单元, 空间转换只有在标识事件转换的情况下, 才能引发读者更新情境模型。     

Starting from scratch and building brick by brick in comprehension

During narrative comprehension, readers construct representations of the situation described by a text, called situation models. Theories of situation model construction and event comprehension posit two distinct types of situation model updating: incremental updating of individual situational dimensions, and global updates in which an old model is abandoned and a new one created. No research to date has directly tested whether readers update their situation models incrementally, globally, or both. We investigated whether both incremental and global updating occur during narrative comprehension. Participants typed what they were thinking while reading an extended narrative, and then segmented the narrative into meaningful events. Each typed think-aloud response was coded for whether it mentioned characters, objects, space, time, goals, or causes. There was evidence for both incremental and global updating: Readers mentioned situation dimensions more when those dimensions changed, controlling for the onset of a new event. Readers also mentioned situation dimensions more at points when a new event began than during event middles, controlling for the presence of situational change. These results support theories that claim that readers engage in both incremental and global updating during extended narrative comprehension.     

Visuelle und räumliche Interferenzen beim Schlußfolgern

The present paper provides evidence for a differential involvement of spatial and visual mental resources in propositional and spatial reasoning. Two experiments consider the load on visuospatial working memory during reasoning. Subjects solve propositional and spatial reasoning tasks either alone or in combination with visual tracking. In the first experiment, subjects resource allocation strategy is manipulated. Independently of the allocation of mental resources to the reasoning tasks or the tracking task, tracking is found to interfere much more with spatial than with propositional reasoning. In the second experiment, propositional reasoning after a comprehension training is disrupted by a simultaneous secondary spatial task, but not by the visual tracking task.