Expectations, Mental Representations, and Spatial Inferences

Abstract

This chapter describes the importance of mental models in the context of spatiality. It discusses the inference processes during the construction of spatial mental representations and the way these processes differ from those on propositional representations. A propositional representation is based on the segmentation of a text into propositions. In principle, this follows an arbitrary syntactic structure. Propositional representations are very general and powerful tools. However, this generality makes it difficult, if not impossible, to test them empirically. During text comprehension, readers construct a representation of what is said in the text. They do this by combining information given in the text with previous knowledge they activate from memory. If a text describes spatial arrangements, then spatial knowledge will be activated. The mental representation should have the same structure as the spatial arrangement. The mental representation is like a small scale model. There is an interaction among the reader's expectations, the form of the mental representation, and the inference processes.