Brunyé Tad T, Mahoney Caroline R, Taylor Holly A
Tufts University, Department of Psychology, Medford, MA, United States.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2010 May;134(1):110-24. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.01.003. Epub 2010 Feb 9.
Readers mentally simulate the perceptual and motoric elements related through text. Sound is one perceptual characteristic of these embodied simulations that has received little attention. Two experiments tested whether movement sounds (walking vs. running) or metronome pulses (fast vs. slow) would modulate reading speed and memory for two different types of spatial descriptions, route and survey. Route descriptions describe environments from a first-person, ground-level perspective whereas survey descriptions use an aerial overview perspective. Experiment 1 demonstrated that route description readers altered their reading speed in correspondence with both movement and metronome sounds, progressing through descriptions faster when hearing fast-paced versus slow-paced sounds. When reading survey descriptions, however, readers only modulated their reading speed while listening to metronome pulses. Those who showed the greatest reading time effects with the route description and footstep sounds also showed difficulty solving inferences from the survey perspective. Experiment 2 demonstrated that movement sounds influenced perceptions of distance traveled such that estimates of environmental scale increased after listening to running versus walking sounds. Taken together these results demonstrate that route description readers mentally simulate a journey through a described world, and these simulations and the resulting spatial memories can be guided by auditory information.
读者会在脑海中模拟通过文本关联起来的感知和运动元素。声音是这些具身模拟的一种感知特征，但很少受到关注。两项实验测试了运动声音（行走与跑步）或节拍器脉冲（快与慢）是否会调节阅读速度以及对两种不同类型空间描述（路线和俯瞰）的记忆。路线描述从第一人称、地面视角描述环境，而俯瞰描述则使用鸟瞰视角。实验1表明，阅读路线描述的读者会根据运动和节拍器声音改变阅读速度，听到快节奏声音时比听到慢节奏声音时能更快地读完描述。然而，在阅读俯瞰描述时，读者仅在听节拍器脉冲时才会调节阅读速度。那些在阅读路线描述和脚步声时阅读时间效应最大的人，在从俯瞰视角进行推理时也存在困难。实验2表明，运动声音会影响对行进距离的感知，即听到跑步声音后对环境规模的估计比听到行走声音后更高。综合这些结果表明，阅读路线描述的读者会在脑海中模拟在描述的世界中旅行，这些模拟以及由此产生的空间记忆可以由听觉信息引导。
