TY - JOUR
T1 - Mental models contribute to foregrounding during text comprehension
AU - Glenberg, Arthur M.
AU - Meyer, Marion
AU - Lindem, Karen
N1 - Funding Information:
Preparation of this report was funded in part by Office of Naval Research Contract N0014-85-K-0644. Part of the research is based on the third author’s senior honor’s thesis. Requests for reprints should be sent to Arthur Glenberg, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, 1202 W. Johnson St.. Madison, WI 53706.
PY - 1987/2
Y1 - 1987/2
N2 - A primary property of mental models is that they represent what the text is about (the events, objects, and processes described in the text), rather than features of the text itself. We used this property to demonstrate that mental models are operative during text comprehension. Subjects read texts that were propositionally equivalent, but described events in which the main actor was either spatially associated with a target object or spatially dissociated from the object. Pronominal reference kept the actor foregrounded throughout the text, but the target object was never repeated. The question of interest was whether the target object remained foregrounded when the text described events in which the actor and the object were spatially associated. Data from experiments using item recognition and reading time measures provided an affirmative answer. Thus the mental model controlling foregrounding reflected the structure of the events described by the text, not just the structure of the text.
AB - A primary property of mental models is that they represent what the text is about (the events, objects, and processes described in the text), rather than features of the text itself. We used this property to demonstrate that mental models are operative during text comprehension. Subjects read texts that were propositionally equivalent, but described events in which the main actor was either spatially associated with a target object or spatially dissociated from the object. Pronominal reference kept the actor foregrounded throughout the text, but the target object was never repeated. The question of interest was whether the target object remained foregrounded when the text described events in which the actor and the object were spatially associated. Data from experiments using item recognition and reading time measures provided an affirmative answer. Thus the mental model controlling foregrounding reflected the structure of the events described by the text, not just the structure of the text.
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U2 - 10.1016/0749-596X(87)90063-5
DO - 10.1016/0749-596X(87)90063-5
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0002512489
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 26
SP - 69
EP - 83
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 1
ER -