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Tracking of spatial information in narratives.
1State University of New York, Binghamton, USA. whlevine@email.unc.edu
Memory & Cognition
|May 16, 2001
Summary
Narrative location information is stored in readers' situation models, updated instantly, and remains accessible long after its last mention. This challenges previous findings on memory representation for salient narrative details.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Narrative Comprehension
Background:
- Understanding how readers mentally represent settings in narratives is crucial for cognitive science.
- Previous research suggested location information quickly becomes inaccessible in memory.
- The role of narrative salience in memory representation requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the memory representation of location information in narratives.
- To determine the temporal accessibility of narrative locations in readers' memory.
- To examine the impact of narrative structure on the accessibility of location details.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted using recognition tasks and reading times.
- Participants processed narratives with varying location information and narrative structures.
- Measures included accessibility of former locations and processing of location-typical entities.
Main Results:
- Location shifts caused an immediate decrease in the accessibility of previous locations.
- Reference to location-typical entities was processed quickly when the protagonist remained in the location.
- Accessibility of salient location information persisted even after several sentences without mention.
Conclusions:
- Salient narrative location information is incorporated into readers' situation models.
- Situation models are updated immediately and maintain high accessibility for locations.
- Findings contrast with previous research, highlighting the robust nature of situation model updating.