Spatial Situation Models Research Articles

Children's Enactment of Characters' Movements: A Novel Measure of Spatial Situation Model Representations and Indicator of Comprehension

ABSTRACTA story's space or setting often determines and constrains the actions of its characters. We report on an experiment with 106 children of 7–8 years old in which, using a novel enactment task, we measured children's representation of a story character's movement during story listening. We found that children were more likely to enact movements that were explicitly stated in the passage than those they had to infer based on their situation model representation of the house and the character's location within it. We found that this ability to infer movements was significantly predictive of children's narrative comprehension after controlling for oral comprehension, vocabulary, working memory, and enactment of explicitly stated movements. We discuss the role of spatial situation models in comprehension and potential future uses for this enactment task in research and classrooms.

The construction of visual–spatial situation models in children’s reading and their relation to reading comprehension

Readers construct mental models of situations described by text to comprehend what they read, updating these situation models based on explicitly described and inferred information about causal, temporal, and spatial relations. Fluent adult readers update their situation models while reading narrative text based in part on spatial location information that is consistent with the perspective of the protagonist. The current study investigated whether children update spatial situation models in a similar way, whether there are age-related changes in children’s formation of spatial situation models during reading, and whether measures of the ability to construct and update spatial situation models are predictive of reading comprehension. Typically developing children from 9 to 16years of age (N=81) were familiarized with a physical model of a marketplace. Then the model was covered, and children read stories that described the movement of a protagonist through the marketplace and were administered items requiring memory for both explicitly stated and inferred information about the character’s movements. Accuracy of responses and response times were evaluated. Results indicated that (a) location and object information during reading appeared to be activated and updated not simply from explicit text-based information but from a mental model of the real-world situation described by the text; (b) this pattern showed no age-related differences; and (c) the ability to update the situation model of the text based on inferred information, but not explicitly stated information, was uniquely predictive of reading comprehension after accounting for word decoding.

A model of comprehension in spina bifida meningomyelocele: Meaning activation, integration, and revision

Spina bifida meningomyelocele (SBM) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with adequate development of word reading and single word comprehension, but deficient text and discourse comprehension. Studies of comprehension in children with SBM are reviewed in relation to a comprehension model in which meanings are either activated from the surface code or constructed through resource-intensive integration and revision processes to form representations of the text base and models of the situation described by the text. Two new studies probed the construction of situation models in SBM. Experiment 1 tested the ability to build spatial and affective situation models from single sentences in 86 children with SBM (8 to 18 years of age) and 37 control children (8 to 16 years of age). Experiment 2 tested the ability to integrate across sentences to build spatial situation models in 15 children with SBM and 15 age-matched controls. Compared to age peers, children with SBM did not construct situation models that required integration of information across sentences, even though they could construct such models from single sentences. The data bear on the distinctive SBM neurocognitive profile, and more generally, on the significance of integration processes for the constructive aspects of language comprehension.

Predictability of locomotion: Effects on updating of spatial situation models during narrative comprehension

We investigated how the updating of spatial situation models during narrative comprehension depends on the interaction of cognitive abilities and text characteristics. Participants with low verbal and visuospatial abilities and participants with high abilities read narratives in which the protagonist's motions in a fictitious building were either highly predictable or very hard to predict. In Experiment 1, high-ability readers updated spatial situation models only if the protagonist's motions were hard to predict, whereas low-ability readers did so only if the motions were highly predictable. In Experiment 2, facilitated integrative spatial processing compensated for the low-ability participants' resource limitations. As a result, both ability groups updated spatial situation models with hard-to-predict protagonist motions. These results highlight the interactions of cognitive abilities and text characteristics in spatial situation model updating.

The Cambridge handbook of visuospatial thinking

1. Functional significance of visuospatial representations Barbara Tversky 2. Visuospatial images Daniel Reisberg and Friderike Heuer 3. Disorders of visuospatial working memory Robert Logie and Sergio Della Sala 4. Individual differences in spatial abilities Mary Hegarty and David Waller 5. Sex differences in visuospatial abilities: more than meets the eye Diane F. Halpern and Marcia L. Collear 6. Development of spatial competence Nora S. Newcombe and Amy E. Learmonth 7. Navigation Daniel R. Montello 8. Mapping the understanding of understanding maps Holly A. Taylor 9. Spatial situation models Mike Rinck 10. Design applications of visual spatial thinking: the importance of frame of reference Christopher D. Wickens, Michele Vincow and Michele Yeh 11. The presentation and comprehension of graphically-presented data Priti Shah, Eric G. Freedman and Ioanna Vekiri 12. Multimedia learning: guiding visuospatial thinking with instructional animation Richard E. Mayer.

Three turtles in danger: spontaneous construction of causally relevant spatial situation models.

In 4 experiments, the author explored the spontaneous construction of spatial situation models during discourse comprehension by using the sentence-recognition paradigm of J. D. Bransford, J. R. Barclay, and J. J. Franks (1972). In Experiment 1, signaling causal relevance of spatial relations was a necessary precondition for replicating their original finding of spontaneously constructed spatial representations. Causal relevance was ensured in the subsequent experiments by a judgment task indirectly demanding the evaluation of described spatial relations with regard to causal relevance. Participants spontaneously constructed spatial situation models of text presented auditorily or visually. Effects of spontaneous construction were more reliable when encoding was easier. The results suggest a revised interpretation of J. D. Bransford et al.'s study and corroborate recent evidence showing that relevant spatial information in texts is reliably represented.

Updating Spatial Situation Models: Effects of Prior Knowledge andTask Demands

The updating process is crucial to the development of a situation model. The process may be either an online or a delayed process. These 2 opposite assumptions led us to investigate the time course and quality of the updating process. We assumed that the updating process is sensitive to readers' prior knowledge and to the task that participants have to perform. We compared the data obtained with 2 tasks that both assessed the integration of the same information: a probe task inserted during the comprehension of the text and an inference judgment task presented after the text comprehension. Our results demonstrated that all readers can update their situation model online, but the delayed integration of new incoming information requires a high level of prior knowledge of the situation described. Moreover, the online updating is enhanced when participants complete a task that strengthens the model that initially is built. The implications for this new view of the updating process are discussed within current theories of text comprehension.

Selecting one among many referents in spatial situation models.

Five experiments related anaphor resolution to a classic memory variable, namely, interference created by multiple uses of a given object-concept, and by spatial distance of the referent from the reader's focus of attention. Participants memorized a diagram of a building with rooms containing objects, and then read narratives describing characters' activities there. Reading was self-paced word by word. Accessibility was measured by readers' time to understand anaphoric sentences containing a definite noun phrase referring to an object in its room. Spatial distance between the object and the current focus of attention increased reading times for names of the object, the room, and sentence wrap-up. Multiple examples of a target-object increased its reading time only if they were scattered across different rooms. An associative model of memory retrieval during text comprehension was used to interpret the complex pattern of results.

Selecting one among many referents in spatial situation models.

Selecting one among many referents in spatial situation models.

Using temporal information to construct, update, and retrieve situation models of narratives.

Four experiments explored how readers use temporal information to construct and update situation models and retrieve them from memory. In Experiment 1, readers spontaneously constructed temporal and spatial situation models of single sentences. In Experiment 2, temporal inconsistencies caused problems in updating situation models similar to those observed previously for other dimensions of situation models. In Experiment 3, merely implied temporal order information was inferred from narratives, affecting comprehension of later sentences like explicitly stated order information. Moreover, inconsistent temporal order information prevented the creation and storage in memory of an integrated situation model. In Experiment 4, a temporal inconsistency increased processing time even if readers were unable to report the inconsistency. These results confirm the significance of the temporal dimension of situation models.

The metrics of spatial situation models.

The authors investigated the metrics of spatial distance represented in situation models of narratives. In 3 experiments, a spatial gradient of accessibility in situation models was observed: The accessibility of objects contained in the situation model decreased with increasing spatial distance between the object and the reader's focus of attention. The first 2 experiments demonstrated that this effect of spatial distance was purely categorical rather than Euclidean: Accessibility depended on the number of rooms located between the object and the focus of attention, not on the size of the rooms. Experiment 3 revealed, however, that participants were able to use information about Euclidean distance in a secondary task when necessary. The implications of these results for theories of narrative comprehension and hierarchical versus nonhierarchical theories of spatial memory are discussed.

The metrics of spatial situation models.

The metrics of spatial situation models.

Spatial situation models and narrative understanding: Some generalizations and extensions

The generality of effects of situation models on narrative comprehension was investigated. In three experiments, a spatial gradient of accessibility in situation models was observed. The accessibility of objects contained in the situation model decreased with increasing spatial distance between the object and the focus of attention in the readers’ situation model. A variety of factors that might influence the spatial gradient effect were investigated: the way the relevant spatial information was acquired (studying a text vs. a layout), the spatial scenario (a research center vs. a day care center), the direction of spatial distance (backward vs. forward on the route), the language used (English vs. German), the manner in which the accessibility of objects was probed (object probe pairs vs. anaphoric sentences), the existence of prior knowledge about the objects (objects learned as part of the scenario vs. unknown objects), and the participants’ task (reading narratives vs. imagining their own movements). ...

Spatial Situation Models and Text Comprehension.

Three experiments examined how readers inferred spatial information that was relevant to a story character's movements through a previously memorized layout of a fictional building relative to various tasks. This study also examined how inference measures were related to spatial imagery and reading comprehension ability. Replicating the spatial separation effect reported by Morrow, Greenspan, and Bower (1987), probed objects were responded to faster when they were located in the same room of a building as the main character of a narrative than when the objects were located in different rooms. Experiment 2 ruled out a simple name-based priming explanation of the spatial separation effect, and Experiment 3 demonstrated a facilitation for objects from the character's target room even when readers were provided with a spatially indeterminate list description of the building. The construction-integration model of text comprehension accounted for the spatial separation effect in terms of variations in the knowledge-integration process. It was concluded that the integration of an enriched knowledge network can facilitate the process of mapping text information onto a developing mental representation of a discourse situation, a process that gains further support from spatial imagery and reading comprehension ability.

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 possession of a relatively strong spatial representation does not influence the processing and representation of subsequent spatial information under a normal reading instruction. Therefore, during normal reading, readers are not very much engaged in constructing, maintaining, and updating a spatial situation model.