Pictures and Anaphora
Abstract
Pictures help people to comprehend and remember texts. The goal of this project is to begin to understand how this occurs. Section I of this report contains a summary of work on several subgoals. Section II contains the report of two experiments testing the assumption that pictures provide an external memory which can assist working memory and thereby facilitate comprehension. We predicted that the availability of a diagram would interact with the difficulty of resolving anaphor references in texts. Resolution of an anaphor distance from its antecedent (which should stress working memory) should benefit greatly from a picture, whereas resolution of an anaphor near to its antecedent should benefit less from a picture. In experiments involving both cumulative and moving window presentations of texts, picture availability and distance separating antecedent from anaphor were manipulated. Although both picture presence and ease of anaphor resolution significantly improved subjects comprehension of the material, no evidence was found for an interaction of these factors. The results are interpreted as consistent with either dual code theory or aspects of working memory management that do not involve anaphor resolution.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 29, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA240153
Entities
People
- Arthur M. Glenberg
- Peter Kruley
Organizations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison