Mental Models in Narrative Comprehension
- 5 January 1990
- journal article
- review article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 247 (4938) , 44-48
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.2403694
Abstract
Readers of stories construct mental models of the situation and characters described. They infer causal connections relating characters' actions to their goals. They also focus attention on characters' movements, thereby activating nearby parts of the mental model. This activation is revealed in readers' faster answering of questions about such parts, with less facilitation the greater their distance from the focus. Recently visited as well as imagined locations are also activated for several seconds. These patterns of temporary activation facilitate comprehension.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Causal thinking and the representation of narrative eventsPublished by Elsevier ,2004
- Constraints on priming in spatial memory: Naturally learned versus experimentally learned environmentsMemory & Cognition, 1989
- Logical necessity and transitivity of causal relations in storiesDiscourse Processes, 1989
- Subjective hierarchies in spatial memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1989
- Variations in size of the visual field in which targets are presented: An attentional range effectPerception & Psychophysics, 1986
- Causal relatedness and importance of story eventsJournal of Memory and Language, 1985
- Word recognition in a functional context: The use of scripts in readingJournal of Memory and Language, 1985
- The mental representation of spatial descriptionsMemory & Cognition, 1982
- Visual images preserve metric spatial information: Evidence from studies of image scanning.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1978
- Language and ConsciousnessLanguage, 1974