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Temporal and spatial distance in situation models
Memory & Cognition
|February 28, 2001
Summary
Readers prioritize important narrative details based on temporal and spatial distance. Story and spatial distances impact memory accessibility, but reading time does not, supporting constructionist text comprehension theories.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Narrative comprehension involves creating situation models.
- Readers focus attention on crucial elements within these models.
- Temporal and spatial information influences attentional focus.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate how temporal and spatial distance guide attention in narrative comprehension.
- Determine the impact of story time, spatial distance, and discourse time on memory accessibility.
- Test predictions derived from constructionist theories of text comprehension.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted using narrative comprehension tasks.
- Spatial distance effects measured by memory accessibility of objects/rooms relative to protagonist.
- Temporal distance manipulated via story duration (minutes vs. hours) and discourse time (brief vs. lengthy description).
Main Results:
- Significant effects of story time distance on memory accessibility were observed.
- Significant effects of spatial distance on memory accessibility were observed.
- Discourse time distance did not significantly affect memory accessibility.
Conclusions:
- Readers utilize temporal and spatial distance cues to focus attention during narrative processing.
- Findings support constructionist theories, emphasizing the active construction of situation models.
- Memory accessibility is modulated by narrative structure, not solely by reading duration.
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