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Social and Behavioral Sciences

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University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Theses/Dissertations

2010

Adaptive memory; Reading comprehension – Psychological aspects; Reading comprehension – Research; Reading – Research; Spatial organization

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Narrative Comprehension For Functional Survival Spatial Relations, Paul James Schroeder Iii May 2010

Narrative Comprehension For Functional Survival Spatial Relations, Paul James Schroeder Iii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Spatial situation models are mental representations of the relationship between characters and objects in the narrative environment. Functional spatial relationships describe an interaction (or potential interaction) between characters and objects in the narrative environment. Although functional relations tend to produce stronger representations as compared with nonfunctional ones (Radvansky & Copeland, 2000), recent data also suggest that specification of causal information, specifically, survival-based scenarios in which characters are described as in immediate danger, may contribute to the construction and maintenance of spatial situation models (Jahn, 2004). For the current study, this idea was tested by comparing reading times and comprehension for …