Graduates

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/commencement_fall2015/1029/thumbnail.jp

Wand oder keine Wand? Die Repräsentation räumlicher Veränderungen in Situationsmodellen.

Item does not contain fulltextTwo experiments were carried out to answer the following questions: Do readers integrate spatial changes described in naturalistic narratives into situation models? And do these spatial changes affect availability in memory of entities described in texts? In both experiments, participants first learned about the layout of a research building including its rooms and a number of objects located in these rooms. Afterwards, they read a long narrative describing several people, activities, and events located in the building. Among many other events, the narrative described how the building was reconstructed twice by adding and deleting walls. After each of the two reconstructions, participants read several episodes taking place in the spatially changed building. Reading times of critical sentences were collected to measure the representation of spatial changes in the situation model and the availability of objects located in the model. Both experiments revealed that readers did represent the spatial changes in their situation model. Furthermore, they incorporated the changes into their representation of protagonist movements described in the text. Unlike earlier experiments, however, we did not find a consistent distance effect, that is, the availability of objects did not decrease consistently with increasing spatial distance between the object and the protagonist of the narrative