Rolf A Zwaan
Biographic Data
| ID | 733482 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rolf A Zwaan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rolf A |
| FAMILY NAME | Zwaan |
| SIGNATURE | ZWAAN R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Florida State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9967-7879 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 335 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries: Global Evidence on How People Encounter and Engage with Information about Science
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Walter Kintsch: Grace and gravitas
Walter Kintsch has an unparalleled impact on the field of discourse processing. In this article, I describe the impact he has had and continues to have on my own work. I summarize my impression of Walter with two words—grace and gravitas—and provide anecdotes to show how these qualities of his personality have impacted me as a researcher. Furthermore, I discuss how his work with Teun van Dijk on situation models was instrumental for the developme…
Comprehension: From clause to conspiracy narrative
In this article, I outline the evolution of my research in the domain of narrative comprehension.I cover three phases: (1) the event-indexing model, which explores connecting events in narratives; (2) the immersed experiencer framework, which focuses on event representations and mental simulations; and (3) a preliminary exploration of conspiracy thinking, in which I reveal parallels with coherence generation in narrative comprehension.I emphasize…
Deictic shift in the production of direct and indirect speech
We investigated how deictic shifts and memory representation influence production difficulties in reported speech. In Experiment 1, participants read short stories, including a conversation between two protagonists. Participants then recalled the last sentence from the conversation in either direct or indirect speech. When participants had verbatim memory of the to-be-reported utterance, direct speech production was faster than indirect speech if…
National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during …
A pre-registered, multi-lab non-replication of the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE)
The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is a well-known demonstration of the role of motor activity in the comprehension of language. Participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences by producing movements toward the body or away from the body. The ACE is the finding that movements are faster when the direction of the movement (e.g., toward ) matches the direction of the action in the to-be-judged sentence (e.g., Art gave …
Language concatenates perceptual features into representations during comprehension
Although many studies have investigated the activation of perceptual representations during language comprehension, to our knowledge only one previous study has directly tested how perceptual features are combined into representations during comprehension. In their classic study, Potter and Faulconer [(1979). Understanding noun phrases. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 509–521.] investigated the perceptual representation of adj…
Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to Covid-19 pandemic using machine learning
At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social…
The processing and evaluation of news content on social media is influenced by peer-user commentary
Contemporary news often spreads via social media. This study investigated whether the processing and evaluation of online news content can be influenced by Likes and peer-user comments . An online experiment was designed, using a custom-built website that resembled Facebook, to explore how Likes, positive comments, negative comments, or a combination of positive and negative comments would affect the reader’s processing of news content. The resul…
Directional prepositions and event endpoint conceptualization: A study of naar and richting in Dutch
Two Dutch directional prepositions (i.e., naar and richting ) provide a useful paradigm to study endpoint conceptualization. Experiment 1 adopted a sentence comprehension task and confirmed the linguistic proposal that, when naar was used in motion event descriptions, participants were more certain that the reference object was the goal of the agent than when richting was used. Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 used this linguistic pair to test the e…
Making replication mainstream
Many philosophers of science and methodologists have argued that the ability to repeat studies and obtain similar results is an essential component of science. A finding is elevated from single observation to scientific evidence when the procedures that were used to obtain it can be reproduced and the finding itself can be replicated. Recent replication attempts show that some high profile results – most notably in psychology, but in many other d…
Justify your alpha
Predictive processing and situation models: Constructing and reconstructing religious experience
The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition
What are emotion concepts? The answer to this question is the topic of the present chapter. We begin with the observation that people possess the concepts of “joy, " “sadness, " and “fear, " among others, as indicated by their language use and their behavior (e.g. Russell, Lewicka, and Nitt, 1989). They also recognize perceptual input from other people, such as their faces and bodies, as meaning that those people feel “joy” and “sadness” and “fea…
Words in action: Using gestures to improve verb learning in primary school children
Research on embodied cognition has shown that action and language are closely intertwined. The present study seeks to exploit this relationship, by systematically investigating whether motor activation would improve eight-to-nine year old children’s learning of vocabulary in their first language. In a within-subjects paradigm, 49 children learned novel object manipulation, locomotion and abstract verbs via a verbal definition alone and in combina…
Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation
In two experiments, we investigated whether body posture influences people's estimation of quantities. According to the mental-number-line theory, people mentally represent numbers along a line with smaller numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right. We hypothesized that surreptitiously making people lean to the right or to the left would affect their quantitative estimates. Participants answered estimation questions while standing on a …
Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking
Theory development in embodiment research: Getting the timing right
Mental simulation in language comprehension and social cognition
Current theories in social cognition and cognitive psychology conceptualize understanding of actions and of language describing actions as the performance of sensorimotor simulations. Although there is emerging empirical evidence for these theories, they are currently underspecified and the evidence is correspondingly coarse. Language is a sensitive tool that allows us to construe actions in myriad ways. This paper discusses several challenges th…
Embodied Language: A Review of the Role of the Motor System in Language Comprehension
A growing body of research suggests that comprehending verbal descriptions of actions relies on an internal simulation of the described action. To assess this motor resonance account of language comprehension, we first review recent developments in the literature on perception and action, with a view towards language processing. We then examine studies of language processing from an action simulation perspective. We conclude by discussing several…
The Forewarning Effect of Coherence Markers in Persuasive Discourse: Evidence From Persuasion and Processing
Several studies showed how coherence markers, like connectives and lexical cue phrases, influence the processing and representation of informative text. Although discourse analysts have repeatedly argued that coherence markers influence the processing of persuasive text as well, there is hardly any empirical evidence for this idea. This article reports on 2 experiments investigating the possible forewarning effect of coherence marking: When coher…
Time in Language, Situation Models, and Mental Simulations
The purpose of this article is to propose a view of language processing, and particularly the role of aspect therein, from a mental-simulation perspective. I argue that situation model theories can account for the flow between and interconnectedness of event representations but that mental simulation theories are needed to account for the internal structure of event representations. The article concludes with some speculative thoughts on how simu…
Seeing, acting, understanding: Motor resonance in language comprehension.
Observing actions and understanding sentences about actions activates corresponding motor processes in the observer-comprehender. In 5 experiments, the authors addressed 2 novel questions regarding language-based motor resonance. The 1st question asks whether visual motion that is associated with an action produces motor resonance in sentence comprehension. The 2nd question asks whether motor resonance is modulated during sentence comprehension. …
Processing negated sentences with contradictory predicates: Is a door that is not open mentally closed
Situation models in language comprehension and memory
This article reviews research on the use of situation models in language comprehension and memory retrieval over the past 15 years. Situation models are integrated mental representations of a described state of affairs. Significant progress has been made in the scientific understanding of how situation models are involved in language comprehension and memory retrieval. Much of this research focuses on establishing the existence of situation model…
Processing negated sentences with contradictory predicates: Is a door that is not open mentally closed
Justify your alpha
The influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation‐model construction
This study examines the influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation‐model construction during narrative comprehension. Twelve college students who were enrolled in a third‐semester French course thought aloud during the comprehension of English and French stories. After each text, the students performed a verb‐clustering task. Scores on these two tasks indicate that the students generated more explanatory inferences in …
Emotions and literary text comprehension
Do readers construct spatial representations in naturalistic story comprehension
This study investigated whether spatial situation models are constructed in naturalistic story comprehension. The experiment featured a relatively complex, naturalistic text. When college students were given a normal reading instruction, they processed spatial information relatively fast and were relatively poor in verifying spatial inferences, compared to subjects given a spatial reading instruction. Additional analyses showed that the possessio…
Generating predictive inferences while viewing a movie
This study investigated conditions that enable viewers to predict future events while viewing a movie. Predictions about future events can be supported by visual, auditory, and discourse information. These information sources serve to emphasize or introduce the individually necessary, and jointly sufficient, conditions that support predictive inference processes. They may also introduce new, anomalous information that can be understood in terms o…
Some parameters of literary and news comprehension: Effects of discourse-type perspective on reading rate and surface structure representation
Character and reader emotions in literary texts
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Embodied cognition, perceptual symbols, and situation models
It is difficult to see how current models of discourse comprehension can be “scaled up” to account for the rich situation models that may be constructed during naturalistic language comprehension, as when readers are immersed in the story world. Recent proposals about embodied cognition and perceptual symbols, such as those put forth by Glenberg and Robertson and by Roth might offer a framework to address this problem more successfully than tradi…
Mental simulation in language comprehension and social cognition
Current theories in social cognition and cognitive psychology conceptualize understanding of actions and of language describing actions as the performance of sensorimotor simulations. Although there is emerging empirical evidence for these theories, they are currently underspecified and the evidence is correspondingly coarse. Language is a sensitive tool that allows us to construe actions in myriad ways. This paper discusses several challenges th…
The Forewarning Effect of Coherence Markers in Persuasive Discourse: Evidence From Persuasion and Processing
Several studies showed how coherence markers, like connectives and lexical cue phrases, influence the processing and representation of informative text. Although discourse analysts have repeatedly argued that coherence markers influence the processing of persuasive text as well, there is hardly any empirical evidence for this idea. This article reports on 2 experiments investigating the possible forewarning effect of coherence marking: When coher…
Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation
In two experiments, we investigated whether body posture influences people's estimation of quantities. According to the mental-number-line theory, people mentally represent numbers along a line with smaller numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right. We hypothesized that surreptitiously making people lean to the right or to the left would affect their quantitative estimates. Participants answered estimation questions while standing on a …
Time in Language, Situation Models, and Mental Simulations
The purpose of this article is to propose a view of language processing, and particularly the role of aspect therein, from a mental-simulation perspective. I argue that situation model theories can account for the flow between and interconnectedness of event representations but that mental simulation theories are needed to account for the internal structure of event representations. The article concludes with some speculative thoughts on how simu…
Words in action: Using gestures to improve verb learning in primary school children
Research on embodied cognition has shown that action and language are closely intertwined. The present study seeks to exploit this relationship, by systematically investigating whether motor activation would improve eight-to-nine year old children’s learning of vocabulary in their first language. In a within-subjects paradigm, 49 children learned novel object manipulation, locomotion and abstract verbs via a verbal definition alone and in combina…
On the role of computer models and technology in literary and media studies
The computer in perspective
Comprehension: From clause to conspiracy narrative
In this article, I outline the evolution of my research in the domain of narrative comprehension.I cover three phases: (1) the event-indexing model, which explores connecting events in narratives; (2) the immersed experiencer framework, which focuses on event representations and mental simulations; and (3) a preliminary exploration of conspiracy thinking, in which I reveal parallels with coherence generation in narrative comprehension.I emphasize…
Theory development in embodiment research: Getting the timing right
The computer in perspective
Some Aspects of Scholarly Communication in Linguistics: An Empirical Study
On the role of computer models and technology in literary and media studies
Some parameters of literary and news comprehension: Effects of discourse-type perspective on reading rate and surface structure representation
Do readers construct spatial representations in naturalistic story comprehension
This study investigated whether spatial situation models are constructed in naturalistic story comprehension. The experiment featured a relatively complex, naturalistic text. When college students were given a normal reading instruction, they processed spatial information relatively fast and were relatively poor in verifying spatial inferences, compared to subjects given a spatial reading instruction. Additional analyses showed that the possessio…
Dimensions of situation model construction in narrative comprehension.
The Construction of Situation Models in Narrative Comprehension: An Event-Indexing Model
In this article, we propose and test a model of how readers construct representations of the situations described in simple narratives the event-indexing model According to the event-indexing model, events are the focal points of situations conveyed in narratives and are connected in memory along five dimensions time, space, protagonist, causality, and intentionality The results of a verb-clustering task provide strong support for the event-index…
Character and reader emotions in literary texts
Emotions and literary text comprehension
Generating predictive inferences while viewing a movie
This study investigated conditions that enable viewers to predict future events while viewing a movie. Predictions about future events can be supported by visual, auditory, and discourse information. These information sources serve to emphasize or introduce the individually necessary, and jointly sufficient, conditions that support predictive inference processes. They may also introduce new, anomalous information that can be understood in terms o…
The influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation‐model construction
This study examines the influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation‐model construction during narrative comprehension. Twelve college students who were enrolled in a third‐semester French course thought aloud during the comprehension of English and French stories. After each text, the students performed a verb‐clustering task. Scores on these two tasks indicate that the students generated more explanatory inferences in …
Discourse Comprehension
The field of discourse processing has dissected many of the levels of representation that are constructed when individuals read or listen to connected discourse. These levels include the surface code, the propositional textbase, the referential situation model, the communication context, and the discourse genre. Discourse psychologists have developed models that specify how these levels are mentally represented and how they are dynamically built …
Situation models in language comprehension and memory
This article reviews research on the use of situation models in language comprehension and memory retrieval over the past 15 years. Situation models are integrated mental representations of a described state of affairs. Significant progress has been made in the scientific understanding of how situation models are involved in language comprehension and memory retrieval. Much of this research focuses on establishing the existence of situation model…
Embodied cognition, perceptual symbols, and situation models
It is difficult to see how current models of discourse comprehension can be “scaled up” to account for the rich situation models that may be constructed during naturalistic language comprehension, as when readers are immersed in the story world. Recent proposals about embodied cognition and perceptual symbols, such as those put forth by Glenberg and Robertson and by Roth might offer a framework to address this problem more successfully than tradi…
The Effect of Implied Orientation Derived from Verbal Context on Picture Recognition
Perceptual symbol systems assume an analogue relationship between a symbol and its referent, whereas amodal symbol systems assume an arbitrary relationship between a symbol and its referent. According to perceptual symbol theories, the complete representation of an object, called a simulation, should reflect physical characteristics of the object. Amodal theories, in contrast, do not make this prediction. We tested the hypothesis, derived from pe…
Language Comprehenders Mentally Represent the Shapes of Objects
We examined the prediction that people activate perceptual symbols during language comprehension. Subjects read sentences describing an animal or object in a certain location. The shape of the object or animal changed as a function of its location (e.g., eagle in the sky, eagle in a nest). However, this change was only implied by the sentences. After reading a sentence, subjects were presented with a line drawing of the object in question. They j…
Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking
"One of the key questions in cognitive psychology is how people represent knowledge about concepts such as football or love. Recently, some researchers have proposed that concepts are represented in human memory by the sensorimotor systems that underlie interaction with the outside world. These theories represent a recent development in cognitive science to view cognition no longer in terms of abstract information processing, but in terms of perc…
Seeing, acting, understanding: Motor resonance in language comprehension.
Observing actions and understanding sentences about actions activates corresponding motor processes in the observer-comprehender. In 5 experiments, the authors addressed 2 novel questions regarding language-based motor resonance. The 1st question asks whether visual motion that is associated with an action produces motor resonance in sentence comprehension. The 2nd question asks whether motor resonance is modulated during sentence comprehension. …
Processing negated sentences with contradictory predicates: Is a door that is not open mentally closed
Embodied Language: A Review of the Role of the Motor System in Language Comprehension
A growing body of research suggests that comprehending verbal descriptions of actions relies on an internal simulation of the described action. To assess this motor resonance account of language comprehension, we first review recent developments in the literature on perception and action, with a view towards language processing. We then examine studies of language processing from an action simulation perspective. We conclude by discussing several…
The Forewarning Effect of Coherence Markers in Persuasive Discourse: Evidence From Persuasion and Processing
Several studies showed how coherence markers, like connectives and lexical cue phrases, influence the processing and representation of informative text. Although discourse analysts have repeatedly argued that coherence markers influence the processing of persuasive text as well, there is hardly any empirical evidence for this idea. This article reports on 2 experiments investigating the possible forewarning effect of coherence marking: When coher…
Time in Language, Situation Models, and Mental Simulations
The purpose of this article is to propose a view of language processing, and particularly the role of aspect therein, from a mental-simulation perspective. I argue that situation model theories can account for the flow between and interconnectedness of event representations but that mental simulation theories are needed to account for the internal structure of event representations. The article concludes with some speculative thoughts on how simu…
Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking
Theory development in embodiment research: Getting the timing right
Mental simulation in language comprehension and social cognition
Current theories in social cognition and cognitive psychology conceptualize understanding of actions and of language describing actions as the performance of sensorimotor simulations. Although there is emerging empirical evidence for these theories, they are currently underspecified and the evidence is correspondingly coarse. Language is a sensitive tool that allows us to construe actions in myriad ways. This paper discusses several challenges th…
Psychology (37 works) · Computer Science (34 works) · Linguistics (25 works) · Cognitive psychology (24 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (24 works) · Comprehension (20 works) · Cognitive science (16 works) · Cognition (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works)