Children's Learning Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Department of Special Education, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2014 Mar;119:101-11. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2013.10.011. Epub 2013 Dec 6.
Readers construct mental models of situations described by text to comprehend what they read, updating these situation models based on explicitly described and inferred information about causal, temporal, and spatial relations. Fluent adult readers update their situation models while reading narrative text based in part on spatial location information that is consistent with the perspective of the protagonist. The current study investigated whether children update spatial situation models in a similar way, whether there are age-related changes in children's formation of spatial situation models during reading, and whether measures of the ability to construct and update spatial situation models are predictive of reading comprehension. Typically developing children from 9 to 16 years of age (N=81) were familiarized with a physical model of a marketplace. Then the model was covered, and children read stories that described the movement of a protagonist through the marketplace and were administered items requiring memory for both explicitly stated and inferred information about the character's movements. Accuracy of responses and response times were evaluated. Results indicated that (a) location and object information during reading appeared to be activated and updated not simply from explicit text-based information but from a mental model of the real-world situation described by the text; (b) this pattern showed no age-related differences; and (c) the ability to update the situation model of the text based on inferred information, but not explicitly stated information, was uniquely predictive of reading comprehension after accounting for word decoding.
读者通过阅读文本构建描述情境的心理模型，以理解所读内容，并根据关于因果、时间和空间关系的明确描述和推断信息更新这些情境模型。流畅的成年读者在阅读基于主角视角的叙事文本时，会根据与文本一致的空间位置信息来更新他们的情境模型。本研究调查了儿童是否以类似的方式更新空间情境模型，在阅读过程中儿童的空间情境模型形成是否存在与年龄相关的变化，以及构建和更新空间情境模型的能力是否可以预测阅读理解。从 9 岁到 16 岁的典型发展儿童（N=81）熟悉一个市场的物理模型。然后将模型覆盖，儿童阅读描述主角在市场中移动的故事，并接受有关角色移动的明确说明和推断信息的记忆项目。评估了回答的准确性和反应时间。结果表明：(a) 阅读过程中的位置和物体信息似乎不仅是从基于文本的明确信息中激活和更新的，而且是从文本所描述的现实世界情境的心理模型中激活和更新的；(b) 这种模式没有表现出与年龄相关的差异；(c) 在考虑单词解码后，基于推断信息而不是明确说明信息更新文本情境模型的能力可以独特地预测阅读理解。
