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Related Experiment Videos

How does verb aspect constrain event representations?

Carol J Madden1, Rolf A Zwaan

  • 1Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1270, USA. madden@psy.fsu.edu

Memory & Cognition
|September 6, 2003
PubMed
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Perfective aspect in sentences signals completed events, influencing mental models. Imperfective aspect does not reliably signal event completion, suggesting varied mental representations of ongoing situations.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Linguistics
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Understanding how linguistic aspect influences mental representations is crucial for psycholinguistics.
  • Previous research has explored the impact of verb tenses on situation models, but the role of aspectual cues requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the distinct contributions of perfective and imperfective aspectual cues in constructing situation models.
  • To determine if perfective aspect leads to mental representations of completed events, while imperfective aspect does not.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments were conducted using sentence-picture verification tasks.
  • Participants processed sentences with either perfective or imperfective aspect and responded to visual stimuli depicting events at different stages of completion.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Response times and picture choices were recorded as measures of mental representation.

    • Main Results:

    • Participants consistently favored completed event pictures after perfective sentences, unlike after imperfective sentences.
    • Reaction times were faster for completed event pictures with perfective sentences, but not with imperfective sentences.
    • Reading times for perfective sentences were faster after viewing completed events, whereas imperfective sentences showed no such difference.

    Conclusions:

    • The perfective aspect reliably cues the construction of mental representations of completed events.
    • The imperfective aspect does not consistently cue a specific stage of completion, indicating that readers may represent in-progress events with varying degrees of completion.