title: Dynamic mental representations in language comprehension.
abstract: Previous research has suggested that language comprehension routinely involves dynamic mental representations. Mental representations of temporal information about successive events stored in memory were investigated. Three experiments were conducted using a sentence-probe-recognition task in which the sentence events and the probe events were designed to reflect either a chronological time orientation or a reversed time orientation. The implicit time shift between events also was manipulated. Chronological events were more accessible than the reversed-time events, even for events involving a scenario shift. However, when the sentence events and the probe events differed by level within a hierarchical structure, the effect of temporal orientation disappeared. The results suggest that readers continue to track mentally an event's temporal structure and anticipate the upcoming event in a dynamic representation until another event emerges on a different level within a hierarchical structure.
authors.affiliation: Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.forename: Yue-Jia
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008960:Models, Psychological; D033262:Narration; D009949:Orientation; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013998:Time Perception