Updating Situation Models: Reply to Zwaan and Madden (2004).

Abstract

A basic component of the comprehension process during reading involves the continual integration of incoming information with the evolving discourse representation; that is, the representation is continually updated as new information is introduced. O’Brien, Rizzella, Albrecht, and Halleran (1998) contrasted two competing views of this updating process: the memory-based text processing view and the here-and-now view. According to the here-and-now view, readers maintain a continually updated model of the situation described by the text within the here and now or active portion of the discourse model. Incoming information is checked against the here-and-now portion of the discourse model and is used to update that model. Thus, unless information is introduced that conflicts with the current model