The Role of Reader Age and Focus of Attention in Creating Situation Models from Narratives

Bibliographic Data

ID12441925
AuthorsDaniel Morrow (University of New Hampshire, corresponding author), D G Morrow, Elizabeth A L Stine‐morrow (0000-0002-9977-2160, University of New Hampshire), E A L Stine-Morrow, Von O Leirer (Decision Systems (United States)), V O Leirer, Jill M Andrassy (Decision Systems (United States)), Jason Kahn (0000-0003-2701-5491, Decision Systems (United States))
Year1997
Volume52B
Issue2
PagesP73-P80
Publication date1997-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journals of Gerontology Series B (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1079-5014 • E-ISSN: 1758-5368
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/geronb/52b.2.p73
PMID9060982
OpenAlexW2119464110
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited2

We examined adult age differences in the mental representation of situations and how readers update this representation during narrative comprehension. Older and younger adults memorized a building layout and then read narratives about a protagonist's actions in this building. The narratives contained critical sentences that described the protagonist moving from one room (the "source room") into another (the "goal room"), through an unmentioned path room. Each critical sentence was followed by a target sentence referring to an object in one of these rooms. Half of the target sentences explicitly mentioned the room containing this object and half did not. Reading time increased when the target object was more distant from the protagonist and when the room containing the object was not mentioned, suggesting that readers tracked the protagonist's location in the layout and allocated resources in order to maintain coherence in the situation model. Older adults' reading times differentially slowed with distance, and older readers who more accurately understood the narrative differentially slowed when the location of the target object was not mentioned. Finally, the more accurate readers (older and younger) slowed primarily when updating was most difficult (i.e., both when the room containing the object was not mentioned and for more distant objects). While these findings reveal qualitative similarity in how older and younger readers update spatially organized situation models, they also suggest that older readers must sometimes allocate more resources to this updating process in order to maintain comprehension

Art · Cognitive science · Focus (optics · Literature · Narrative · Physics · Sociology · Child and Animal Learning Development · Child Development and Digital Technology · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development

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