Integration of Pictures and Discourse
Abstract
Pictures help people to comprehend and remember texts. The goal of this project is to begin to understand how this occurs. This Final Technical Report describes progress in three areas. First, the authors have demonstrated that pictures are used to modify the mental representation derived from texts. When reading with pictures, people tend to form mental models, even when reading in relatively unfamiliar domains. These mental models are representations of what the text is about (in contrast to representations of the text itself), they have an analogical character, and they are constructed using the visual/spatial sketchpad of working memory. Second, they have documented some comprehension processes that are affected by pictures and some that are not. In particular, ease of anaphor resolution is independent of the presence or absence of pictures. On the other hand, pictures enhance the reader's ability to compute a particular kind of elaborative inference that is called "noticing." These inferences are derived from spatial relations within the mental model, but need not represent spatial information. Third, the authors describe a computer simulation that demonstrates how the various processes and representations identified experimentally can be coordinated using a limited-capacity system. Reading, Comprehension, Pictures, Mental models.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA261493
Entities
People
- Arthur M. Glenberg
Organizations
- University of Wisconsin Madison Department of Psychology