KIT - REPORT 126 Object Access in Mental Models under Different Perspectives Induced by Linguistic Expressions

Die vorliegende Arbeit ist im Rahmen des interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekts " Kognition und Kontext " an der Technischen Universität Berlin entstanden. A mental model of a text should allow for access to objects distributed spatially, according to the text. An experiment was conducted to test three hypotheses about the representation of spatial relations between a recipient of texts and the objects mentioned. Subjects read stories about a protagonist situated in a room, describing several objects in specified spatial relations to the protagonist. After each story the subjects decided on two objects whether these were mentioned in the text (target) or not (distractor). First hypothesis: The latency of target verification depends on the spatial relation between the protagonist and the object. Objects in front of the protagonist should be verified faster than those beside and behind him. If objects beside or behind the protagonist are verified faster in a recognition task, it should allow one to decide between one of two alternative models: the spatial framework model (objects beside are slowest) and the model of mental transformation (objects behind are slowest). The results corresponded to the latter. This seems to suggest that the access to mentioned objects depends on a mental model of the situation which is transformed analogous to a perceptual representation. Second hypothesis: If the protagonist changes his orientation, according to the text, the previous relations will be rotated. After the answer to the first test object the story was continued and a new orientation of the protagonist was mentioned. The verification latency of the second test object was determined definitely by the new orientation. This result supports an access to objects via a mental model. Third hypothesis: 'Experiencer' verbs (e.g., "Peter sees the wardrobe.") are more likely to induce the perspective of the protagonist than 'agent' verbs (e. g., "Peter looks at the wardrobe."). The latter version should support an external perspective of the recipient. A systematic structure in latencies of object verification will be found only under the protagonist's perspective. In case of an external perspective, response times should be about equal for all positions of objects. The response times confirmed these hypotheses. Finally, the categories 'experiencer verbs' and 'agent verbs' proved to induce different perspectives, according to the hypothesis.