Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Thursday Evening Posters 1120–1122
for facilitating text comprehension in college undergraduates. Participants
read texts in one of four instruction conditions: image, paraphrase,
understand (a neutral baseline condition), and count (counting the
number of nouns). Performance on a subsequent comprehension test
reflected a classic levels of processing effect, with deep encoding
(image and paraphrase conditions) leading to higher scores than shallow
encoding (count condition) and the neutral “read to understand”
condition falling somewhere in between. There was, however, no comprehension
advantage for mental imagery instructions over paraphrasing.
The results cast doubt on the value of mental imagery as a
strategy for improving text comprehension.
(1120)
Situation Model Updating for Different Narrative Perspectives.
DAVID E. COPELAND & LINDSEY L. OSTERMAN, University of
Southern Mississippi—Studies of narrative comprehension have
shown that readers often adopt the perspective of characters in the
text. This study examined effects that have been previously observed
(e.g., greater accessibility of associated than of dissociated items) as
the perspective of the text was manipulated. Specifically, comparisons
were made between third-person (e.g., he/she) and second-person (i.e.,
you) perspectives. Within- and between-subjects designs revealed that
people are more likely to show an effect in the second-person perspective
when presented with both perspectives. Implications for situation
model theory are considered, particularly for more recent studies
in which event memory has been examined when people are
actively involved in the situation (e.g., in a virtual environment).
(1121)
The Effect of Narrative Time Shifts on the Representation of Goal-
Related Information. WILLIAM H. LEVINE, JOEL A. HAGAMAN,
CARI ANNE BOGULSKI, REBECCA R. GREEN, & DORTHIE S.
ORTIGO, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville—Experimental investi-
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gations of situation model construction have typically focused on single
dimensions (e.g., time). The experiments that we conducted examined
the effect of changes in one dimension, time, on the representation
of information from another dimension, intentionality (i.e., character
goals). In the first experiment, participants read vignettes in which a
character’s time-limited goal (e.g., meeting an application deadline) was
or was not completed. Following the goal completion manipulation,
there was a short or long time shift, with the latter moving the narrative
action close to the time by which the goal had to be completed. The results
of a recognition probe task suggest that time shifts had a somewhat
paradoxical effect: Goal information became more active after the
long time shifts. A follow-up experiment examined the role of the nature
of goals on this effect. The results are discussed with respect to the
construction of multidimensional situation models.
(1122)
Changing Beliefs Based on Information in Fictional Narratives.
MIJA M. VAN DER WEGE, Carleton College, & AMY KURIVCHACK
& DAVID N. RAPP, University of Minnesota—Nonfiction sources (i.e.,
textbooks, documentaries, lectures) are usually designed to convey
facts and concepts. Individuals, though, often learn facts from fiction
sources (see, e.g., Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, 2003), and their existing
beliefs about facts can be influenced by statements made in fictional
narratives (see, e.g., Prentice, Gerrig, & Bailis, 1997). Interestingly,
Prentice et al. found that university students’ beliefs were more
likely to be influenced by reading fictional accounts set at rival institutions
rather than fictional accounts set at home institutions. In their
study showing general persuasion by fiction, however, Wheeler, Green,
and Brock (1999) failed to replicate cross-institution effects. In this
project, we test several explanations of these discrepant results. Our
replication included participants at comparable liberal arts institutions,
as well as at a large state institution. We discuss our results with respect
to general underlying mechanisms of knowledge acquisition.