Spatial situation models and narrative understanding: Some generalizations and extensions

Rinck, Mike; Williams, Pepper; Bower, Gordon H.; Becker, Eni S.

doi:10.1080/01638539609544948

Cited by 51 publications

(65 citation statements)

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“…Similar distance effects occur when subjects learn spatial arrangements of rooms and objects from detailed verbal descriptions. Relying exclusively on verbal descriptions, our subjects memorized a rectangular preschool with five rooms (Rinck et al 1996). Each room had two doors leading to adjacent rooms and a third door opening into a common inner courtyard.…”

Section: Learning a Spatial Layout From A Verbal Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of a Cognitive Psychologist: A Journey from Simple Behaviors to Complex Mental Acts

Bower

2008

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

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The author summarizes his evolving interests from conditioning studies within a behaviorist orientation, thence to human memory, knowledge representation, and narrative understanding and memory. Arguing that the study of skilled reading provides a microcosm for revealing cognitive processes, he illustrates this by reviewing his research on the use of spatial priming to investigate readers' on-line updating of their situational models of texts. Conceptual entities close to the reader's focus of attention within the model are readily retrieved. Retrieval speed from memory declines with the probed object's distance from the current focus and decays with time elapsed in the narrative since the item was last in focus. The focus effect varies with the character's perspective, his status in the story, his active goals, and other factors. The results are accommodated within an associative network model distinguishing just-read sentences in short-term memory from activated portions of long-term memory structures to which they refer.

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Section: Learning a Spatial Layout From A Verbal Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of a Cognitive Psychologist: A Journey from Simple Behaviors to Complex Mental Acts

Bower

2008

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

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“…As a result, spatial distance from focus affects accessibility of objects in memory; known objects spatially close to the protagonist become more primed and accessible in memory than spatially distant objects. This effect has been referred to as the spatial gradient ofaccessibility or spatial distance effect, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly (see, e.g., Morrow, Bower,& Greenspan, 1989;Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, 1987;Rinck & Bower, 1995;Rinck, Hahnel, Bower, & Glowalla, 1997;Rinck, Williams, Bower, & Becker, 1996; Wilson, Rinck, McNamara, Bower, & Morrow, 1993).Most experiments that have revealed an effect of spatial distance on accessibility have followed the procedure introduced by Morrow et al (1989) or a version of the paradigm developed by Rinck and Bower (1995). Participants first memorize the layout of a building with many rooms, each containing a number of critical objects.…”

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Temporal and spatial distance in situation models

Rinck

Bower

2000

Memory & Cognition

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In two experiments, we investigated how readers use information about temporal and spatial distance to focus attention on the more important parts ofthe situation model that they create during narrative comprehension. Effects of spatial distance were measured by testing the accessibility in memory of objects and rooms located at differing distances from the protagonist's current location. Before the test probe, an intervening episode was inserted in the narrative. Story time distance was manipulated by stating that the intervening episode lasted for either minutes or hours. Discourse time-that is, time spent reading from prime to test-was manipulated by describing the intervening episode either briefly or at length. Clear effects of story time distance and spatial distance on accessibility were found, whereas discourse time distance did not affect accessibility. The results are interpreted as supporting constructionist theories of text comprehension.During the comprehension of narrative texts, comprehenders build multilevel representations of the information that the texts convey (see, e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990;Glenberg & Langston, 1992;Johnson-Laird, 1983;Kintsch, 1988Kintsch, , 1998 van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983;Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995). Here, we will investigate one such level of representation: the situation model or mental model of the text. Situation models are the level oftext representation associated with "deep" understanding, and they serve to integrate the information stated in a text with the reader's world knowledge. In short, situation models "represent what the text is about, not the text itself" (Glenberg, Meyer, & Lindem, 1987, p. 70).Situation models are presumed to be multidimensional; in them, many different aspects ofa situation are hypothesized to be represented. These include temporal, spatial, and causal relations, as well as protagonists' goals and emotions (Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995;Zwaan, Magliano, & Graesser, 1995;Zwaan, Radvansky, Hilliard, & Curiel, 1998). Yet despite this multidimensionality ofsituation models, most experimental studies have addressed only single dimensions. Among these, spatial relations are the type ofinformation Preparation ofthis paper was supported by Grant Ri 600/3-3 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to M,R" and by NIMH Grant IR37-MH-47575 to G.H.B. We thank Daniel Morrow for supplying primary versions ofthe experimental narratives. He also made helpful comments on an earlier version ofthis paper, as did Rolf Zwaan and Tom Trabasso. The assistance of James Reybauld and Saskia Traill in conducting the experiments is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to Bruno Lecoutre for helpful suggestions regarding the computation of effect sizes in repeated-measures designs. Correspondence should be addressed to M. Rinck, TV Dresden, Dept. of General Psychology, D-01062 Dresden, Germany (e-mail: rinck@rcs.urz.tu-dresden.de). G. H. Bower may be reached at gordon@psych.stanford.edu. examined most often (see Bower & Morrow, 1990;Graesser, Millis, ...

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“…This spatial gradient occurs regularly, even when the memory organization may be more temporal than spatial (Curiel & Radvansky, 2002) or when the story protagonist is not actually moving, but is only thinking about traveling through the building (Rinck, Williams, Bower, & Becker, 1996). Furthermore, this effect is governed by the number of rooms that are traversed rather than a reflection of Euclidean distance (Rinck & Denis, 2004;Rinck, Hähnel, Bower, & Glowalla, 1997).…”

Section: Spatial Gradient Of Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This spatial gradient of availability is more prominent when the movement is in a continuous, expected direction, as compared to when the movement from room to room is more random (e.g., jumping from room to room via security cameras) (Dutke & Rinck, 2006;Rapp et al, 2006). Finally, the reader needs to have extensive knowledge of the spatial layout prior to reading, through either memorizing a map or reading a spatial description of the environment that associates the objects with the rooms that they are in prior to reading the narratives (Haenggi, Kintsch, & Gernsbacher, 1995;Rinck et al, 1996). Without such knowledge, the spatial gradient is not observed (Zwaan, Radvansky, Hilliard, & Curiel, 1998).…”

Section: Spatial Gradient Of Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Event memory and moving in a well-known environment

et al. 2013

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Research in narrative comprehension has repeatedly shown that when people read about characters moving in well-known environments, the accessibility of object information follows a spatial gradient. That is, the accessibility of objects is best when they are in the same room as the protagonist, and it becomes worse the farther away they are see, e.g., Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, (Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 165-187, 1987). In the present study, we assessed this finding using an interactive environment in which we had people memorize a map and navigate a virtual simulation of the area. During navigation, people were probed with pairs of object names and indicated whether both objects were in the same room. In contrast to the narrative studies described above, several experiments showed no evidence of a clear spatial gradient. Instead, memory for objects in currently occupied locations (e.g., the location room) was more accessible, especially after a small delay, but no clear decline was evident in the accessibility of information in memory with increased distance. Also, memory for objects along the pathway of movement (i.e., rooms that a person only passed through) showed a transitory suppression effect that was present immediately after movement, but attenuated over time. These results were interpreted in light of the event horizon model of event cognition.

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Spatial situation models and narrative understanding: Some generalizations and extensions

Cited by 51 publications

References 37 publications

The Evolution of a Cognitive Psychologist: A Journey from Simple Behaviors to Complex Mental Acts

The Evolution of a Cognitive Psychologist: A Journey from Simple Behaviors to Complex Mental Acts

Temporal and spatial distance in situation models

Event memory and moving in a well-known environment

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