Comprehension and Memory of Spatial and Temporal Event Components
Abstract
Across three experiment series, we assessed how people update mental representations of events (called situation models). The first series decomposed spatial and temporal updating with people reading texts. These components involved (1) processing shift signals, (2) establishing new frameworks, (3) maintaining relevant objects, and (4) removing irrelevant objects. We observed component independence. The second and third series assessed cognition as people moved through virtual spaces. In the second series, we found that information about objects was less accessible when there was a spatial shift, particularly for objects the person was currently carrying. This suggests that people operating in complex environments, such as urban battlegrounds, can be negatively affected by the structure of those environments and their interaction with them. For the third series, people first memorized a map of a building. Then they navigated a virtual simulation of the building and were probed with object name pairs. We observed that memory for objects in a person's current location was more available. Second, memory for objects along pathways, that a person passed through but did not interact with, was suppressed. These findings suggest that some prior knowledge of environments may actually be less available by the very act of navigating that space.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA477195
Entities
People
- Gabriel A. Radvansky
Organizations
- University of Notre Dame