Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, 216 Memorial Hall, Fayetteville, AR, 72701, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2019 Jul;47(5):983-996. doi: 10.3758/s13421-019-00915-7.
Two experiments were conducted to examine whether readers maintain location in a highly-accessible state in memory during narrative comprehension while reading narratives with goals closely tied to locations that story protagonists needed to reach. College undergraduates (n = 185, n = 100) read short, experiment-generated narratives manipulated in three ways. First, protagonist location was manipulated such that the goal was either completed or not, making subsequent critical sentences consistent or inconsistent, respectively, with the last-described location. Second, text distance between the manipulation of location and the later target sentence was varied such that the critical sentences were close to or distant from the last mention of location. Third, location words that explicitly mentioned the protagonist's location were either present or not in the critical sentences. Readers took longer to read critical sentences when the protagonist had not been described as reaching the goal location, suggesting that readers were maintaining location information in highly-accessible state. This effect emerged with or without explicit location words in the critical sentences and with near or distant backgrounding. These results are discussed in the context of scenario-based and memory-based theories of comprehension.
两项实验旨在考察在阅读与目标位置密切相关的叙事时，读者在理解叙述过程中是否会将位置信息保持在高度可及的状态。研究招募了 185 名大学生（实验组 100 名）阅读经过三种方式操控的短篇、生成叙事。首先，操控主角的位置，使目标要么完成，要么未完成，使后续关键句分别与最后描述的位置一致或不一致。其次，操控位置和后续目标句之间的文本距离不同，使关键句与位置的最后一次提及距离较近或较远。最后，关键句中是否出现明确提到主角位置的位置词。当主角没有被描述为到达目标位置时，读者阅读关键句的时间会延长，这表明读者在将位置信息保持在高度可及的状态。无论关键句中是否出现明确的位置词，以及背景距离远近，这种效应都会出现。这些结果在基于场景和基于记忆的理解理论背景下进行了讨论。
