This research investigates a fundamental aspect of language understanding, namely, the way people construct and use mental models of situations being described in discourse. The mental model is like an internal """"""""theater stage"""""""" that a reader or listener constructs in imagination to represent the locations, objects, characters, actions, and causal mechanisms described in a text. Readers/listeners use their developing model to interpret later statements in a discourse, to resolve ambiguities and references, to direct inferences, to learn new information, and understand how it fits into their prior knowledge. Imparting an accurate situational model is typically the main goal of instructional discourse as well as plot-centered narratives. When describing a mechanism, scene, or narrative, writers use various linguistic devices to foreground certain concepts and referents, thus placing them in the focus of attention within the reader's situational model. This attentional focusing importantly influences the way comprehension proceeds. Research has shown that memory representations of objects in focus within the mental model become highly activated, thus facilitating later references to them or retrieval of information about them. Furthermore, activation of memory objects occurs according to their proximity to the focus in the mental model. The proposed research investigates the properties and consequences of this focus of attention as it is moved around within a mental model. Shifting the focus when following characters' movements leaves a trail of activation on memory-objects along that path in the model, thus enabling rapid retrieval and reference to these objects. The proposed experiments will examine the analog, imagistic nature of the mental model, varying the properties of the spatial displays, the characters' movements, and the reader's perspective on them. The theoretical issues addressed by these experiments include how mental models are maintained, updated, and manipulated in people's working memory, whether and to what extent the models have spatial-imagery properties, and how they are constructed and oriented around a particular station-point or perspective.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award (R37)
Project #
5R37MH047575-02
Application #
3486998
Study Section
Cognition, Emotion, and Personality Research Review Committee (CEP)
Project Start
1991-03-01
Project End
1997-02-28
Budget Start
1993-04-01
Budget End
1994-02-28
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
1993
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Stanford University
Department
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
800771545
City
Stanford
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
94305
Bower, G H; Rinck, M (2001) Selecting one among many referents in spatial situation models. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 27:81-98
Marsh, E J; Edelman, G; Bower, G H (2001) Demonstrations of a generation effect in context memory. Mem Cognit 29:798-805
Rinck, M; Bower, G H (2000) Temporal and spatial distance in situation models. Mem Cognit 28:1310-20
Boroditsky, L (2000) Metaphoric structuring: understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition 75:28-Jan
Bower, G H; Sivers, H (1998) Cognitive impact of traumatic events. Dev Psychopathol 10:625-53
Rinck, M; Hahnel, A; Bower, G H et al. (1997) The metrics of spatial situation models. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 23:622-37
Bower, G H (1996) Reactivating a reactivation theory of implicit memory. Conscious Cogn 5:27-72
Bower, G H; Wagner, A D; Newman, S E et al. (1996) Does recoding interfering material improve recall? J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 22:240-5
Bower, G H; Thompson-Schill, S; Tulving, E (1994) Reducing retroactive interference: an interference analysis. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 20:51-66
Bower, G H (1994) A turning point in mathematical learning theory. Psychol Rev 101:290-300

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