Zacks J M, Tversky B, Iyer G
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2001 Mar;130(1):29-58. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.130.1.29.
How do people perceive routine events, such as making a bed, as these events unfold in time? Research on knowledge structures suggests that people conceive of events as goal-directed partonomic hierarchies. Here, participants segmented videos of events into coarse and fine units on separate viewings; some described the activity of each unit as well. Both segmentation and descriptions support the hierarchical bias hypothesis in event perception: Observers spontaneously encoded the events in terms of partonomic hierarchies. Hierarchical organization was strengthened by simultaneous description and, to a weaker extent, by familiarity. Describing from memory rather than perception yielded fewer units but did not alter the qualitative nature of the descriptions. Although the descriptions were telegraphic and without communicative intent, their hierarchical structure was evident to naive readers. The data suggest that cognitive schemata mediate between perceptual and functional information about events and indicate that these knowledge structures may be organized around object/action units.
随着诸如铺床这类日常事件的逐步展开，人们是如何感知它们的呢？对知识结构的研究表明，人们将事件构想为目标导向的部分整体层次结构。在此，参与者在不同的观看过程中将事件视频分割为粗略和精细的单元；一些人还描述了每个单元的活动。分割和描述都支持事件感知中的层次偏向假设：观察者会自发地根据部分整体层次结构对事件进行编码。同时进行描述会强化层次组织，而熟悉程度在较弱程度上也会起到强化作用。从记忆而非感知进行描述产生的单元较少，但并未改变描述的定性性质。尽管这些描述简洁且没有交流意图，但其层次结构对普通读者来说是明显的。数据表明，认知图式在关于事件的感知信息和功能信息之间起中介作用，并表明这些知识结构可能围绕对象/动作单元组织起来。
