Temporal order relations in language comprehension.

Full Abstract

The role of temporal orientation (chronological or reverse) and chronological distance (close, intermediate, or distant) in general event knowledge on language comprehension was examined. Experiment 1 used a relation-recognition paradigm in which the comprehension of a target event could be facilitated or disrupted by the temporal orientation implied by the prior information. Experiments 2 and 3 used a sentence-probe-recognition paradigm in which the temporal orientation, the stimulus onset asynchrony, and the chronological distance between the sentence event and the probe event were manipulated. The results demonstrated that readers used temporal information conveyed by their knowledge to construct situation models while comprehending sentences. The internal temporal dimension appeared to be directional and reflected the chronological distance between everyday events.

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Author information

Author/s: van der Meer, Elke (E); Beyer, Reinhard (R); Heinze, Bertram (B); Badel, Isolde (I);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Humboldt University at Berlin, Germany. vdMeer(-atsign-)rz.huberlin.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 28 (issue 4) : pp 770-9

Dates: Created 2002/07/11; Completed 2003/02/14; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12109767, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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