Bailey Heather R, Kurby Christopher A, Sargent Jesse Q, Zacks Jeffrey M
Kansas State University, 414 Bluemont Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA.
Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2017 Aug;45(6):940-955. doi: 10.3758/s13421-017-0707-2.
Readers generate situation models representing described events, but the nature of these representations may differ depending on the reading goals. We assessed whether instructions to pay attention to different situational dimensions affect how individuals structure their situation models (Exp. 1) and how they update these models when situations change (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, participants read and segmented narrative texts into events. Some readers were oriented to pay specific attention to characters or space. Sentences containing character or spatial-location changes were perceived as event boundaries-particularly if the reader was oriented to characters or space, respectively. In Experiment 2, participants read narratives and responded to recognition probes throughout the texts. Readers who were oriented to the spatial dimension were more likely to update their situation models at spatial changes; all readers tracked the character dimension. The results from both experiments indicated that attention to individual situational dimensions influences how readers segment and update their situation models. More broadly, the results provide evidence for a global situation model updating mechanism that serves to set up new models at important narrative changes.
读者会生成代表所描述事件的情境模型，但这些表征的性质可能因阅读目标而异。我们评估了关注不同情境维度的指示是否会影响个体构建其情境模型的方式（实验1）以及当情境发生变化时他们如何更新这些模型（实验2）。在实验1中，参与者阅读叙事文本并将其分割成事件。一些读者被引导特别关注人物或空间。包含人物或空间位置变化的句子被视为事件边界——尤其是当读者分别被引导关注人物或空间时。在实验2中，参与者阅读叙事文本并在整个文本中对识别探针做出反应。被引导关注空间维度的读者在空间变化时更有可能更新他们的情境模型；所有读者都追踪人物维度。两个实验的结果都表明，对个体情境维度的关注会影响读者分割和更新其情境模型的方式。更广泛地说，这些结果为一种全局情境模型更新机制提供了证据，该机制用于在重要的叙事变化时建立新模型。
