Assessing the influence of dimensional focus during situation model construction
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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments
Published on: March 1, 2022
David J Therriault1, Mike Rinck, Rolf A Zwaan
1Department of Educational Psychology, University of Florida, College of Education, Gainesville 32611-7047, USA. therriault@coe.ufl.edu
Abstract:
According to Zwaan, Langston, and Graesser's (1995) event-indexing model, when comprehending text, readers monitor changes in a series of critical dimensions: space, time, protagonist, causality, and intentionality. In this study, the influence of dimensional focus was assessed during situation-model construction. Participants read narratives and were instructed to specifically monitor a single dimension while their sentence reading times were recorded. Critical sentence reading times were then analyzed for all shift types. Results support the general prediction that at least the time and protagonist dimensions are resistant to task demands, demonstrating that comprehenders routinely perform dimensional updating processes that are context independent. These results are discussed in the context of the event-indexing model.
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