Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.
Cognition. 2010 Apr;115(1):172-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.10.014. Epub 2009 Nov 24.
Recent research has suggested that reading involves the mental simulation of events and actions described in a text. It is possible however that previous findings did not tap into processes engaged during natural reading but rather those triggered by task demands. The present study examined whether readers spontaneously mentally simulate the actions described in simple narratives by using a memory task that did not encourage the formation of mental images. During encoding, participants read event scenarios preceded by 'I', 'You', or 'He', and then 10 min (Experiment 1) or 3 days later (Experiment 2), we examined memory for action and descriptive elements of these scenarios. Given previous research demonstrating that readers simulate described actions preceded by 'You' from an actor's perspective, we predicted that such action statements would be better remembered than those preceded by 'He' or 'I' - a simulated enactment effect. Results of both experiments supported this prediction; readers had better memory for actions but not descriptive information (10 min and 3 days later) after reading statements preceded by 'You'. Results demonstrate that readers spontaneously mentally simulate actions during language comprehension and take different mental perspectives, even when doing so is not necessary to perform the task.
最近的研究表明，阅读涉及对文本中描述的事件和动作的心理模拟。然而，之前的研究结果可能并没有挖掘出自然阅读过程中所涉及的过程，而只是挖掘出了任务需求所引发的过程。本研究通过使用一种不鼓励形成心理意象的记忆任务，来检验读者是否会自发地在心理上模拟简单叙述中描述的动作。在编码阶段，参与者阅读以“我”“你”或“他”开头的事件场景，然后在 10 分钟（实验 1）或 3 天后（实验 2），我们检查了对这些场景的动作和描述元素的记忆。鉴于先前的研究表明，读者会从演员的角度模拟以“你”开头的描述性动作，我们预测，与以“他”或“我”开头的动作陈述相比，读者会更好地记住以“你”开头的动作陈述，这就是模拟执行效应。两个实验的结果都支持了这一预测；在阅读以“你”开头的陈述后，读者对动作的记忆更好，但对描述性信息的记忆（10 分钟和 3 天后）却没有那么好。研究结果表明，即使在完成任务时不需要这样做，读者在语言理解过程中也会自发地在心理上模拟动作，并采取不同的心理视角。
