Search

Situational model is one of the most intensively investigated topics on discourse comprehension.Up to date,it is widely agreed that narrative comprehension includes mental representation that is based on text description.Event-indexing model explains situational model in detail.The former model proposes that events are the core units of the mental representation,which are defined in five situational dimensions:time,space,character,causality and intentionality.Space is an important dimension for constructing situational model,and a number of studies have shown that readers track spatial information while reading texts.In addition,some studies provided evidence supporting that readers use spatial shift to segment the consecutive narrative.Radvansky and Copeland(2010) explored the influence of spatial shift on the processes of situational model updated in narrative reading by multi-index detection paradigm,which integrated the previous study on spatial situational model updating.However,after scrutinizing their experiment,we found that they did not separate the factors spatial shift and event shift,which actually are not consistent.Based on the above consideration,event segmentation and probe words paradigms were adopted to investigate the function of event shift and spatial shift in narrative reading by four experiments.Experiment 1a repeated a previous study,exploring the effect of spatial shift on situational model updating and reading time,and further verified the rationality of using multi-index detection paradigm in our study.Experiment 1b investigated the influence of spatial shift on situational model updating under the separation of spatial shift and event shift.Experiment 2a studied the effect of spatial shift on event segmentation,and further verified the rationality of using event segmentation paradigm in our study.Experiment 2b explored the influence of spatial shift on event segmentation under the separation of spatial shift and event shift,which can verify the affect of spatial shift to situational model updating.The results showed that the separation of spatial shift and event shift did not cause the updating of situational model.Event unit was the core unit of constructing the narrative's mental representation.Only when the event shift was identified could spatial shift cause readers to update situational model.

Text comprehension is one of the most complex and unique cognitive activities of human beings and is also an important way for us to get information. Therefore, information processing in text comprehension has long been a hot topic in the field of psychology. To attempt to maintain a both locally and globally coherent text representation, readers need to integrate the information currently being read in text comprehension not only with the contents in their working memory, but also with the relevant information from earlier portions of the text in their long-term memory (background information). Current research focuses on the extent to which readers immediately activate background information and how readers integrate this with incoming information. In other words, the aim of current research is to investigate whether the information processing is initiative, positive and strategic or passive, negative and automatic. Regarding this question, there are three main theoretical perspectives with certain experimental evidences, including the constructivism theory, the minimalist hypothesis and the memory-based text processing view. On the basis of summing up the results of research on text comprehension, the bi-processing theory of text comprehension has been proposed to integrate the current controversy. This theory holds that information processing in text comprehension includes coherence-based processing and focus-based processing. Readers should use different methods of information processing according to the characteristics of the materials in text comprehension. The theory also elaborates on text representation and inference in text-reading and forms a complete theoretical frame. A series of experiments has been carried out based on this frame and abundant evidences have been obtained, which greatly enriched the bi-processing theory of text comprehension. In addition, some opinions on the bi-processing theory of text comprehension should be further verified and some questions should receive more attention in future studies.

When categorization is uncertain,the inner mechanism of people's feature induction induced some arguments.In terms of predicting features,Rational Model indicated that people would take all categories into consideration while single-category theory advanced that people only paid attention to the target category.The essential difference between Rational Model and single-category theory is whether people would take the alternative categories into consideration when predicting features.But neither Rational Model nor single-category theory could explain the results of the research by Verde et al in 2005.So Verde et al concluded that the feature prediction in their research might be based on feature association.Therefore,three experiments were designed in this research to investigate how people predicted features when categorization was uncertain.Experiment 1 replicated the experiment of Verde et al(2005)in Chinese circumstance so that the effect of language would be excluded.In Experiment 2,the frequency of the feature association in order to find out whether categories were considered.Experiment 3 the variable of category was controlled in order to find out whether people's induction was based on feature association.Seventy subjects were evenly grouped into experiment 1 and experiment 2,and thirty-four subjects in experiment 3.All of the subjects were individually tested on computers,which controlled list generation,stimulus presentation,and response recording.The procedure comprised five phases:(1)study,(2)a training test,(3)study,(4)a training test,and(5)a final test.During the study phase,all exemplars were shown once.Each exemplar was shown for 4000msec.During the training test phase,subjects should categorize all exemplars into their correct categories.During the final test phase,subjects should decide whether or not the to-be-predicted feature was the one that most likely to appear with the given feature and then to make a yes-no judgment.Experiment 1 gained the same results as the experiment conducted by Verde et al(2005).By controlling the variable of feature association,Experiment 2 found that there was no significant difference in feature prediction between two conditions,which indicated that people's induction was not category-based.Via controlling the variable of category,Experiment 3 found that there was significant difference in feature prediction between two feature association conditions,which indicated that people's induction was based on feature association.The three experiments illustrate that people are inclined to predict features on the basis of feature association when categorization is uncertain.In contrast to the category-based prediction,prediction based on feature association is an economical strategy,which can be adopted to explain many results of the previous studies.

The primary focus in the study of discourse comprehension is the construction and updating of the situation model.It is generally assumed that the construction of the situation model requires the reader to maintain coherence at both the local and global levels.The maintenance of global coherence requires the reader to map incoming information onto relevant information presented earlier in the text but that is no longer available in working memory.The different views on the instantaneous reactivation of text information in long-term memory have lead to two controversial hypotheses.According to the memory-based text processing view,relevant background information becomes reactivated as a fast-acting,passive resonance process in which information in active memory sends a signal-in parallel-to the entire long-term memory.On the other hand,according to the constructionist theory,readers pursue coherent relations throughout the text and attempt to explain why actions,events,and states are mentioned in the text.According to the memory-based text processing view,the construction of the situation model is not instantaneous.However,according to the constructionist theory,readers develop and update the situation model instantaneously.In the past few years,both theories have received strong experimental support.Mo Leng(2005)pointed out that the divergence between these two theories stems from the use of different materials in the experiments.Moreover,their research proposed the dual-processing view,which describes the focusing reading and coherent reading.Furthermore,the research tested focusing reading with goal-based text and indicated that under the control of goal-focus,the text information is constructed in a here-and-now manner.However,the time course of the construction of the situation model was not clear.The current research attempts to clarify this.The moving window display technique was used in Experiments 1 and 2a.The eye movement technique was used in Experiment 2b.The experiments involved 126 participants(56 in Experiment 1,42 in Experiment 2a,and 28 in Experiment 2b).The participants in Experiment 1 and 2a read 18 passages each and the participants in Experiment 2b read 15 passages.Every passagedescribed a character who attempted to accomplish a goal.The experimental design was a single-factor(consistent vs.inconsistent vs.qualified)repeated-measures design.The experimenters performed a repeated-measures ANOVA on the time taken to read the target sentences in Experiments 1 and 2a.The results indicated that there was a significant effect of success in target sentence 1:consistent version = qualified version inconsistent condition.The experimenters also performed a repeated-measures ANOVA on first reading time,second reading time,total reading time,and regression times of the critical regions in Experiment 2b.The data from the three experiments demonstrated that the construction and integration of goal-based information occurred instantaneously during the reading.