Perceptual components of situation models

Abstract

These experiments examined the hypothesis that situation model construction involves perceptual processing--specifically, processing that involves visuospatial information. In this research, a dual-task paradigm was used to demonstrate that tasks that engage visuospatial processes interfere more with the generation of a situation model than tasks that are less likely to involve these processes or tasks that are verbal in nature. Using Albrecht and O'Brien's (1993) contradiction effect as evidence of situation model construction, Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants reading short texts while simultaneously holding high-imagery sentences in memory failed to show a significant contradiction effect in comparison with readers holding low-imagery sentences in memory. In Experiment 2, participants reading texts while retaining a difficult visuospatial memory load showed disrupted comprehension in comparison with readers retaining a verbal memory load.