This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) Services Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire PubMed PubMed Citation

Aging and the Representation of Spatial Situations in Narrative Understanding

^a Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham

Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow, Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 210 Education Building MC-708, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820-6990 E-mail: eals{at}uiuc.edu.

Decision Editor: Margie E. Lachman, PhD

	Abstract

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Age differences in the construction of the situation model during text understanding were investigated. Situation model processing was measured in terms of the distance effect, the tendency for readers to process information about objects in a narrative more quickly when the objects are spatially closer to the protagonist than when they are farther away. To examine readers' ability to construct the model directly from the text, the distance effect was contrasted for objects that were either presented in a layout of the narrative setting prior to reading (learned objects) or introduced in the narrative itself (new objects). Both younger and older readers showed strong distance effects for learned objects. When objects had not been learned but were only introduced in the text, however, younger adults did not show a reliable distance effect. Older adults with high levels of comprehension did, lending support to the position that older readers differentially rely on the situation model for effective narrative understanding.

MOST contemporary theories of narrative understanding posit that readers construct not only a proposition-based representation of content called the textbase, but also a situation model or mental model of what the text is about that is constructed by elaborating on the textbase with world or domain knowledge (e.g., Kintsch 1994, Kintsch 1998; Zwaan and Radvansky 1998). There is now a substantial literature suggesting that aging brings declines in the ability to process discourse (see Kemper 1992, and Wingfield and Stine-Morrow 2000, for reviews). Until very recently, however, this work has for the most part focused on memory for the textbase, neglecting the situation model. This is unfortunate for three reasons. First, many theorists argue that situation model construction involves the elaboration of text content based on world knowledge (Gerrig 1993; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). Because cognitive aging is often described as a dissociation between fluid abilities (i.e., mental mechanics) that decline, and crystallized abilities (i.e., knowledge- and culture-based products) that are preserved or enhanced, the knowledge-driven aspect of situation model theory makes it an especially appealing construct for cognitive aging research. Second, reliance on textbase measures perhaps underestimates the capabilities for encoding information from text among elderly readers, who may adopt more holistic approaches to text (Adams 1991; Adams, Smith, Nyquist, and Perlmutter 1997; Radvansky 1999). Finally, and perhaps most importantly from a phenomenological perspective, much reading in everyday life serves the function of transporting us to another world in which we become vicarious participants (Gerrig 1993; Pavel 1986; Zwaan 1999), and it is important to know whether aging brings any change in the ability to participate in this "narrative world."

The situation model of a story is thought to be a multidimensional representation of the narrative world (Zwaan, Langston, and Graesser 1995; Zwaan and Radvansky 1998), including a sense of place (i.e., existing at the "here–now" point with a character inhabiting the discourse world; e.g., Glenberg, Meyer, and Lindem 1987; Morrow, Greenspan, and Bower 1987), as well as a representation of characters' goals (Radvansky and Curiel 1998), likely actions of a protagonist (Albrecht and O'Brien 1993), and characters' emotional reactions (Gernsbacher, Goldsmith, and Robertson 1992). Although the textbase representation appears to be inefficiently (Hartley, Stojack, Mushaney, Annon, and Lee 1994; Stine and Hindman 1994) and fragilely (Cohen and Faulkner 1981; Light and Capps 1986) constructed among older adults, the mental model has been found to be fairly resilient to the effects of aging (Morrow, Stine-Morrow, Leirer, Andrassy, and Kahn 1997; Radvansky and Curiel 1998; Radvansky, Gerard, Zacks, and Hasher 1990; Soederberg and Stine 1995). There is even some evidence that older adults particularly depend on situation-based processing (Miller and Stine-Morrow 1998; Morrow et al. 1997; Radvansky, Zwaan, Curiel, and Copeland 2001; Stine-Morrow, Loveless, and Soederberg 1996), perhaps in some cases as a way of compensating for declines in textbase processes.

	The Spatial Situation Model

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
According to some theorists, the sense of place is critical to narrative comprehension, and this was the focus of our research. The empirical basis of this proposal rests in part on the distance effect, the facilitated processing of objects and events in close spatial proximity to the protagonist (Bower and Morrow 1990; Morrow et al. 1987; Rinck, Hahnel, Bower, and Glowalla 1997). In the prototypical version of this paradigm, participants first study a spatial layout, or map, representing the setting in which the to-be-read narrative will take place. In the narrative, there are periodically descriptions of the protagonist moving from one location (the source) to another (the goal) through an unmentioned room (the path). This motion sentence is followed by a target sentence in which the protagonist thinks about an object in one of these locations. The interesting finding is that verification times for objects following the motion sentence (Morrow, Bower, and Greenspan 1989; Morrow et al. 1987) and reading times for the target sentence (Rinck and Bower 1995) are faster for objects that are closer to the protagonist (i.e., goal < path < source). This pattern suggests that readers "move with" the protagonist through the narrative setting, so as to make locations closer to the protagonist more accessible.

	Aging and Situation Model Updating

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
As noted above, the research done with elders generally suggests a large measure of age constancy in situation model processing (e.g., Radvansky et al. 2001). Older readers demonstrate a distance effect at least as great as that of the young (Morrow, Leirer, Altieri, and Fitzsimmons 1994; Morrow et al. 1997) and show sensitivity to location information denoted by prepositions comparable to that of the young (Radvansky et al. 1990). As in the case of younger readers, older readers are facilitated in their reading by consistency of emotional tone (Soederberg and Stine 1995) and by completion of protagonist goals (Radvansky and Curiel 1998).

There is even some evidence that successful older readers may differentially rely on situation model processing. Morrow and colleagues 1997 manipulated whether or not the location of the object was mentioned in the target sentence. Both younger and older readers slowed down when critical sentences did not explicitly mention the location relative to the case when the object's location was mentioned, suggesting that readers took time to draw this inference. Interestingly, this effect was exaggerated for older adults who were above average in a subsequent measure of comprehension (relative to both the young and below-average elder readers; cf. Morrow et al. 1997, Figure 3), suggesting that more effective elderly readers allocated attentional resources (as measured by the increment in reading time) to instantiate objects in the situation model.

	Rationale for the Current Study

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Many investigations into the spatial situation model rely on a paradigm in which participants are provided with a visual presentation of the narrative setting before reading, which they must be able to reproduce from memory before the text is presented. Some research suggests that virtually identical representations of spatial information can be constructed from visual and verbal descriptions (Denis and Zimmer 1992; Taylor and Tversky 1992). Not surprisingly then, the distance effect has been shown to hold even when participants learn the layout from a verbal text description prior to reading the narrative (Rinck, Williams, Bower, and Becker 1996). Although there is some evidence that readers create spatial models under a variety of task conditions (e.g., Glenberg et al. 1987; Zwaan et al. 1995), it has been argued that readers are likely to monitor and update spatial information only when supported by prior knowledge or when spatial inferences are prompted by referential coherence (de Vega 1995; McKoon and Ratcliff 1992; Zwaan and van Oostendorp 1993). We examined whether older and younger adults would update the spatial model spontaneously when updating was not supported by prior learning or required to achieve referential coherence. As in the classic paradigm, participants read narratives that took place in a previously learned layout. However, some of the objects that the protagonist encountered were not present in the original layout, but were newly introduced in the text. Target sentences always referred to objects but not locations, so there was never any need to activate the location to establish coherence. If readers integrate these newly presented objects into their representations of the layout (i.e., the spatial situation model), then these objects should show the same distance effect in subsequent reading as do the objects that had been learned in the layout a priori.

Developmental hypotheses are also suggested. First, to the extent that situation model processing is preserved with aging, we would expect older adults to show the same or an exaggerated distance effect compared with young adults (e.g., Morrow et al. 1997). Some literature has shown that older adults may have difficulty integrating information across the textbase (e.g., Light and Capps 1986). If this principle is applicable to situation model updating, we would expect older adults to show a diminished distance effect for new objects because they would be less likely, or less able, to integrate the new objects with the previously learned situation model of the narrative setting. However, if older adults are relatively more oriented toward the situation model, it may be that the failure-to-integrate principle does not apply to situation model processing, and older adults may show an exaggerated distance effect for objects whose spatial location is verbally conveyed in the course of ordinary reading.

	Methods

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Participants
Participants were 53 college students (18 to 38 years of age; M = 19.9) and 47 community-dwelling elders from the New Hampshire Seacoast (56 to 79 years of age; M = 65.6). An additional two elderly participants were tested but eliminated from the analysis because their overall reading times were greater than 2.5 standard deviations from the mean of their group (the remaining participants showed average reading times within ±2.1 SDs of their age groups). On average, our older group was highly educated and had an advantage over the young in terms of years of formal education completed (where subscript Y = young and subscript O = older participants, M_Y = 12.95, SD = .90; M_O = 16.50, SD = 2.05), t(94) = 11.08, p <. 001, and Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale vocabulary scores (M_Y = 48.26, SD = 7.17; M_O = 60.43, SD = 6.00), t(94) = 9.13, p < .001. On a working memory (WM) span task developed by Stine and Hindman 1994 and modeled on that of Daneman and Carpenter 1980, younger adults had an advantage over the older ones (average reading and listening span: M_Y = 5.17, SD = 1.06; M_O = 4.50, SD = 1.19), t(97) = 3.00, p < .01.

Stimulus Materials
The setting for all of the narratives was a 10-room research center, similar to that used by Morrow and colleagues 1987. Six narratives were developed for this experiment. They averaged 920 words in length (SD = 81), and contained a mean of 60.3 sentences (SD = 4.1). Mean Flesch-Kincaid grade level was 6.4 (SD = 0.4). In each one, the plot revolved around a different protagonist, providing some motivation for him or her to move about the research center. In the first few paragraphs of each narrative, three new objects were introduced. Each object was initially presented with a modifier and location, then mentioned again explicitly, and finally mentioned implicitly a third time pronominally. Over the course of the rest of the narrative, there were six critical motion sentences, which described a protagonist moving from one room (the source room) to another (the goal room) through an unmentioned (path) room (across the narratives the direction of protagonist movement was varied). Following the motion sentence was a target sentence in which the protagonist was described as mentally interacting with (e.g., remembering, thinking about, wondering about) an object from one of these three locations.

There were two versions of the layout with identical rooms but different objects to allow us to counterbalance the objects across the Learned and New conditions. In the printed layout that the participants memorized, three objects were placed in each room, and during the course of each narrative three new objects were "placed" in three different rooms, so that the maximum number of objects in each room was four. Each participant saw only one version of the layout. An abbreviated sample narrative is presented in A (see B, Note 1). Half of the objects in the target sentences were from the layout as originally memorized (i.e., Learned objects) and half were those introduced in the text (i.e., New objects). Thus, there were six cells in the within-subject design created by factorially combining two levels of Object Type (learned, new) and three levels of Distance from the protagonist (goal, path, source). Each narrative contained one object in each of the six conditions, and across the six narratives, each of the six types of objects appeared in each serial position of the target sentences within the narrative. In this way, target sentences in the different conditions were matched for length, as well as for propositional and syntactic complexity.

Procedure
The entire experimental session lasted about 2 hr. Participants first memorized the layout in which the narrative would take place. They did this by studying the layout for 2 min and then reproducing the names of rooms and objects in their correct locations on a blank copy of the layout. Study-retrieval trials continued until the participant could correctly position all of the rooms and all of the objects. It took older participants more trials than it took the young participants to accomplish this (M_Y = 3.85, SD = 0.99; M_O = 5.81, SD = 1.66), t(98) = 7.26, p < .001.

After learning the layout, participants read each of the narratives on a Macintosh computer with presentation controlled by MacLaboratory software (Chute 1994). Reading was self-paced using a sentence-by-sentence presentation. Participants advanced to each sentence with a keypress and were asked to read each story with the goal of answering a series of questions about it. Immediately after each narrative, participants were presented a series of yes/no comprehension questions on the computer that probed understanding of the protagonist's goals, subgoals organized to achieve goals, and emotional tone and location of the protagonist at critical points in the narrative, as well as the location of learned and new objects (examples of questions for the sample narrative are included in A; note that collectively questions probed both textbase content and inferences not explicitly stated). All participants read and answered questions about a practice passage similar to the experimental passages.

	Results

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Narrative Comprehension
The range of comprehension accuracy was 56.3% to 95.8% among the young and 65.5% to 90.7% among the old (see Table 1 ), showing neither a floor nor ceiling effect on performance. Younger and older adults were comparable in their accuracy overall, F(1,92) = 1.61, and the pattern of accuracy across different question types did not vary as a function of age, F(5,460) = 1.45. Intercorrelations among individual differences and question accuracy are presented in Table 2 .

Target Sentence Reading Times
Mean target sentence reading times were analyzed in a 2 (Age) x 2 (Object Type: learned, new) x 3 (Distance: goal, path, source) repeated measures analysis of variance. Older adults read the target sentences more slowly than younger readers did, F(1,98) = 10.11, p < .01. Target sentences containing learned objects were read more slowly than were those containing new objects, F(1,98) = 18.42, p < .001. This difference was exaggerated among older readers (4,382 vs. 3,848 ms) relative to younger readers (3,642 vs. 3,551 ms), F(1,98) = 7.91, p < .01. This suggests that information about objects learned from the map prior to reading was somewhat less accessible than was information encoded during reading and that this was particularly true for older readers. This difference in accessibility may be due to the different temporal relationships between when learned and new objects were encoded and their use in the narrative (i.e., relative to the target sentences, new objects had been encountered more recently). In other words, only the new objects were mentioned in the text prior to the target sentence, giving them an advantage in terms of activation in the textbase representation. Alternatively, this may reflect the fact that the integration of new information with established knowledge can demand attentional resources (as measured by increased reading time allocation to conceptual integration, Miller 2001, and by increased time required on a secondary task, Britton and Tesser 1982), which simply takes more time.

There was also a significant effect of distance (3,643, 3,909, and 4,038 ms, for goal, path, and source, respectively), F(2,196) = 20.71, p < .001. This distance effect was apparent for the learned objects among both younger (goal = 3,398, path = 3,599, source = 3,928 ms) and older (goal = 4,131, path = 4,439, source = 4,574 ms) readers. Although this effect for new objects appeared to be somewhat more robust among the older (goal = 3,673, path = 4,118, source = 4,051) than the young adults (goal = 3,429, path = 3,564, source = 3,660), none of the interactions with distance reached significance.

Note, however, that this analysis grouped together participants regardless of their effectiveness as readers. Ineffective readers are often less responsive to the demands of the text (which may in part account for why they are ineffective) and essentially add noise to any analysis of strategies used by readers that are engaged by the text (e.g., Miller and Stine-Morrow 1998; Stine-Morrow, Miller, and Leno 2001). Thus, to get a more sensitive estimate of reading strategy, we repeated the analysis for participants showing good comprehension accuracy (75% or better).

The 40 younger and 36 older adults who met this criterion were similar to the sample as a whole in terms of age (M_Y = 19.57, 18 to 38; M_O = 65.17, 56 to 75), vocabulary (M_Y = 49.48, SD = 6.91; M_O = 61.56, SD = 4.69), and average WM span (M_Y = 5.23, SD = 1.12; M_O = 4.62, SD = 1.23). Neither did they differ from the sample as a whole in terms of the reading time allocated to the sentences in which the new objects were introduced (for the subsample, M_Y = 217 ms/syllable, SD = 33; M_O = 241 ms/syllable, SD = 61; for the sample as a whole, M_Y = 215 ms/syllable, SD = 38; M_O = 236 ms/syllable, SD = 57; see B, Note 2).

As in the analysis of the entire sample, there were significant effects of age, F(1,74) = 7.45, p < .01, object type, F(1,74) = 14.47, p < .001, and distance, F(2,148) = 19.38, p < .001, on target sentence reading times, as well as a significant interaction between age and object type, F(1,74) = 5.24, p < .03.

Additionally, among this subsample who showed good comprehension, the distance effect was exaggerated among the older readers, as shown by a significant Age x Distance Interaction, F(2,148) = 4.17, p < .02, and was modified as a function of the combination of age and object type and shown by the significant three-way interaction, F(2,148) = 3.83, p < .025. This interaction among age, object type, and distance is shown in Fig. 1. Although these younger adults showed a distance effect for learned objects, F(2,78) = 13.37, p < .001, the distance effect was not significant for new objects, F(2,148) < 1. The older readers, on the other hand, showed a distance effect for both learned, F(2,70) = 7.27, p < .001, and new, F(2,70) = 8.00, p < .001, objects.

View larger version (15K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Mean reading times for target sentences as a function of distance and age for learned (left panel) and new (right panel) objects. These data represent reading time patterns for those with good comprehension accuracy (at least 75%).

The correlational analysis within each age group showed that the distance effect (collapsing across condition) was a more reliable predictor of performance among the old than the young. This effect among the old was most strongly driven by the distance effect for new objects. Interestingly, to the extent that younger adults' performance was predicted from the distance effect, this was due only to that for learned objects. It is important to note that while younger and older adults showed similar accuracy for questions about location (cf. Table 1 ), it was the relationships between question accuracy and the distance effect that differed for the two age groups. Again, these data are consistent with the notion that younger readers relied relatively more on the textbase to retrieve this information, while older adults may have relied on the situation model.

	Discussion

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Although the optimum representation of text for flexible use in the face of various retrieval demands probably includes the representation of both the propositional textbase and the situation model (Kintsch 1994, Kintsch 1998), the evidence suggests that these two different facets of text representation compete for resources such that readers may focus on one aspect or the other depending on current task demands (Millis, Simon, and tenBroek 1998; Zwaan and Radvansky 1998). It is certainly the case that readers can sometimes answer questions about a text without being able to draw inferences or effectively use the information; such results have been taken as evidence for the psychological reality for the distinction between the textbase and the situation model (Perrig and Kintsch 1985). Our data revealed this sort of dissociation: whereas there were no age differences in the ability to answer questions about the locations of objects that had been described in the text (see Table 1 ), effective older readers, but not effective younger readers, showed a distance effect for these objects. Both younger and older readers, on the other hand, showed reliable distance effects for the objects that had been learned in the map before reading.

Before describing our interpretation of these findings in more detail, we wish to make clear that the differential effects of situation model processing across age were statistically reliable only among those who showed good comprehension performance. It is not unusual for less effective readers to show relatively less sensitivity in their allocation patterns to text (e.g., Miller and Stine-Morrow 1998; Stine-Morrow et al. 2001). The implication here is that our conclusions are most clearly generalizable to engaged readers, those readers who allocate resources as demanded by the text and (presumably as a consequence) show relatively good levels of comprehension and memory performance. Thus, in drawing conclusions about age differences in reading strategy, our findings most clearly address the cognitive events leading up to successful performance (Baltes and Baltes 1990).

Within these boundaries, our data suggest that when updating can be based on established knowledge (as when object locations were learned prior to reading), both younger and older readers spontaneously update the situation model in narrative comprehension. However, only older readers were reliable in spontaneously updating the situation when its initial construction depended on integrating information from the text into the representation. In other words, memorization of the layout of the narrative setting before reading appears to have engendered situation model updating regardless of age.

Without this a priori knowledge of the layout, readers encountering new objects in the narrative setting were free to choose whether to encode these into the textbase or into the situation model. Effective older readers demonstrated a distance effect for these objects, suggesting that they made the choice to encode these objects into the situation model. They apparently did this even though this type of spatial processing was not necessary for referential coherence and additional resources may be required to integrate text-introduced objects into the layout (e.g., de Vega 1995). Younger readers, however, showed no such distance effect in this condition. There are two reasons why they may not have shown this effect. Either they did not encode the new objects into the situation model when these objects were introduced into the text, or they did not update the situation model (i.e., access the locations of these objects relative to the protagonist as she or he moved through the narrative setting). Our data do not clearly discriminate between these two explanations. However, we prefer the former explanation and believe that it is unlikely that objects were fully encoded into the situation model but then somehow tagged as distinctive from the learned objects in situation model updating. It is clearly not the case that younger adults ignored the introduction of the new objects. Their ability to answer questions about the locations of these new objects was at least as good as that of the old, suggesting that they incorporated this information propositionally into the textbase. This made the information accessible for answering questions, but not necessarily part of the working situation model of the discourse world. This finding is consistent with that of Radvansky and colleagues 2001, who showed that younger adults are more likely than older adults to retain the textbase representation. The finding that the new objects were part of the discourse world in on-line reading for older adults showing good comprehension (in the absence of an environmental press to do so) provides evidence for the proposal that successful elderly readers show greater reliance on the situation model.

	Acknowledgments

 
We are grateful for support from National Institute on Aging Grants R01 AG13935 and AG13936. We wish to thank Tery Hansbery for assistance in developing the experimental passages, and Ed O'Brien and Le'Ann Milinder for helpful discussions.

Received for publication January 29, 2001. Accepted for publication November 2, 2001.

	Appendix

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Sample Passage and Probe Questions
Howard was the staff electrician. Known to everyone at the center as a real sweetheart, he was also known to have a weakness for gambling. On this particular day, Howard had been trying to rewire some equipment in the laboratory for over an hour, but he just couldn't get it to work properly. Before that he'd spent close to an hour working on the four-slot toaster in the lounge which had been burning bread for days. The lab technicians had been pressuring him to fix the toaster all morning. Without it they were not able to warm their bagels in the lounge, and they claimed their lunches had not been the same.

[Introduction of two more objects]

[Development of plot: Howard has gambling debt and learns that some shady characters are coming to collect. He frantically roams the center trying to find someone to lend him money before the thugs find him.]

Motion Sentence: Then he walked from the conference room into the reception room.

Target Sentence (Learned Goal): He wondered if there were any loose change near the magazine rack.

[Additional narrative]

Motion Sentence: He walked from the experiment room into the repair shop.

Target Sentence (New Path): He remembered that he had seen his office mate near the toaster.

[Additional narrative]

Just then the secretary grabbed him, shook him a bit, and told him that they had a check for him on the condition that he start attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings.

Questions

Protagonist Goals

Was Howard determined to pay off his debt to the loan sharks on his own? (n)

Protagonist Subgoals

In trying to get some money, did Howard think of selling his VCR? (n)

Emotional Tone

Were the center's employees sympathetic to Howard's situation? (y)

Location of Protagonist

Was it in the reception room that Howard first asked for money? (y)

Location of Learned Objects

Was the magazine rack in the library? (n)

Location of New Objects

Was the toaster located in the conference room? (n)

Note: n = no; y = yes. Answers were not seen by participants.

	Appendix B

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 
Notes

1. Copies of the complete narratives are available on request.
   
2. The reading time measure used here is corrected for sentence length, as the sentences introducing new objects were not controlled for this variable (unlike the target sentences, which were).
   

	References

TOP Abstract The Spatial Situation Model Aging and Situation Model... Rationale for the Current... Methods Results Discussion Appendix Appendix B References

 

• Adams C., 1991. Qualitative age differences in memory for text: A life-span developmental perspective. Psychology and Aging 6:323-336. [Medline]
• Adams C., Smith M. C., Nyquist L., Perlmutter M., 1997. Adult age-group differences in recall for the literal and interpretive meanings of narrative text. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 52B:P187-P195. [Abstract]
• Albrecht J. E., O'Brien E. J., 1993. Updating a mental model: Maintaining both local and global coherence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 19:1061-1070.
• Baltes P. B., Baltes M. M., 1990. Psychological perspectives on successful aging: The model of selective optimization with compensation. Baltes P. B., Baltes M. M., , ed.Successful aging 1-34. Cambridge University Press, New York.
• Bower G. H., Morrow D. C., 1990. Mental modules in narrative comprehension. Science 247:44-48. [Abstract/Free Full Text]
• Britton B. K., Tesser A., 1982. Effects of prior knowledge on use of cognitive capacity in three complex cognitive tasks. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 21:421-436.
• Chute D. L., 1994. MacLaboratory for psychology Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove, CA.
• Cohen G., Faulkner D., 1981. Memory for discourse in old age. Discourse Processses 4:253-265.
• Daneman M., Carpenter P. A., 1980. Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 19:450-466.
• de Vega M., 1995. Backward updating of mental models during continuous reading of narratives. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21:373-385. [Medline]
• Denis M., Zimmer H. D., 1992. Analog properties of cognitive maps constructed from verbal descriptions. Psychological Research 54:286-298.
• Gernsbacher M. A., Goldsmith H. H., Robertson R. R. W., 1992. Do readers mentally represent characters' emotional states?. Cognition and Emotion 6:89-111.
• Gerrig R. J., 1993. Experiencing narrative worlds Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
• Glenberg A., Meyer M., Lindem K., 1987. Mental models contribute to foregrounding during text comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 26:69-83.
• Hartley J. T., Stojack C. C., Mushaney T. J., Annon T. A. K., Lee D. W., 1994. Reading speed and prose memory in older and younger adults. Psychology and Aging 9:216-223. [Medline]
• Kemper S., 1992. Language and aging. Craik F. I. M., Salthouse T. A., , ed.The handbook of aging and cognition 213-270. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
• Kintsch W., 1994. Text comprehension, memory, and learning. American Psychologist 49:294-303. [Medline]
• Kintsch W., 1998. Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition Cambridge University Press, New York.
• Light L. L., Capps J. L., 1986. Comprehension of pronouns in younger and older adults. Developmental Psychology 22:580-585.
• McKoon G., Ratcliff R., 1992. Inference during reading. Psychological Review 99:440-466. [Medline]
• Miller L. M. S., 2001. The effects of real-world knowledge on text processing among older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 8:137-148.
• Miller L. M. S., Stine-Morrow E. A. L., 1998. Aging and the effects of knowledge on on-line reading strategies. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 53B:P223-P233. [Abstract]
• Millis K. K., Simon S., tenBroek N. S., 1998. Resource allocation during the rereading of scientific texts. Memory and Cogntion 26:232-246.
• Morrow D. G., Bower G. H., Greenspan S. L., 1989. Updating situation models during comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 28:292-312.
• Morrow D. G., Greenspan S. L., Bower G. H., 1987. Accessibility and situation models in narrative comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 26:165-187.
• Morrow D. G., Leirer V., Altieri P., Fitzsimmons P., 1994. Age differences in updating situation models from narratives. Language and Cognitive Processes 9:203-220.
• Morrow D. G., Stine-Morrow E. A. L., Leirer V. O., Andrassy J. M., Kahn J., 1997. The role of reader age and focus of attention in creating situation models from narratives. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 52B:P73-P80. [Abstract]
• Pavel T. G., 1986. Fictional worlds Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
• Perrig W., Kintsch W., 1985. Propositional and situational representations of text. Journal of Memory and Language 24:503-518.
• Radvansky G., Gerard L., Zacks R., Hasher L., 1990. Younger and older adults' use of mental models as representations for text materials. Psychology and Aging 5:209-214. [Medline]
• Radvansky G. A., 1999. Aging, memory, and comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science 8:49-53.
• Radvansky G. A., Curiel J. M., 1998. Narrative comprehension and aging: The fate of completed goal information. Psychology and Aging 13:69-79. [Medline]
• Radvansky G. A., Zwaan R. A., Curiel J. M., Copeland D. E., 2001. Situation models and aging. Psychology and Aging 16:145-160. [Medline]
• Rinck M., Bower G. H., 1995. Anaphora resolution and the focus of attention in situation models. Journal of Memory and Language 34:110-131.
• Rinck M., Hähnel A., Bower G. H., Glowalla U., 1997. The metrics of spatial situation models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 23:622-637. [Medline]
• Rinck M., Williams P., Bower G., Becker E. S., 1996. Spatial situation models and narrative understanding: Some generalizations and extensions. Discourse Processes 21:23-55.
• Soederberg L. M., Stine E. A. L., 1995. Activation of emotion information in text among younger and older adults. Journal of Adult Development 2:253-270.
• Stine E. A. L., Hindman J., 1994. Age differences in reading time allocation for propositionally dense sentences. Aging and Cognition 1:2-16.
• Stine-Morrow E. A. L., Loveless M. K., Soederberg L. M., 1996. Resource allocation in on-line reading by younger and older adults. Psychology and Aging 11:475-486. [Medline]
• Stine-Morrow E. A. L., Miller L. M. S., Leno R., 2001. Patterns of on-line resource allocation to narrative text by younger and older readers. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 8:36-53.
• Taylor H. A., Tversky B., 1992. Spatial mental models derived from survey and route descriptions. Journal of Memory and Language 31:261-292.
• van Dijk T. A., Kintsch W., 1983. Strategies of discourse comprehension Academic Press, New York.
• Wingfield A., Stine-Morrow E. A. L., 2000. Language and speech. Craik F. I. M., Salthouse T. A., , ed.Handbook of aging and cognition 2nd ed. 359-416. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
• Zwaan R. A., 1999. Situation models: The mental leap into imagined worlds. Current Directions in Psychological Science 8:15-18.
• Zwaan R. A., Langston M. C., Graesser A. C., 1995. The construction of situation models in narrative comprehension: An event-indexing model. Psychological Science 6:292-297.
• Zwaan R. A., Radvansky G. A., 1998. Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin 123:162-185. [Medline]
• Zwaan R. A., van Oostendorp H., 1993. Do readers construct spacial representations in naturalistic story comprehension?. Discourse Processes 16:125-144.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				K. L. Bopp and P. Verhaeghen Aging and Verbal Memory Span: A Meta-Analysis J. Gerontol. B. Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci., September 1, 2005; 60(5): P223 - P233. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) Services Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire PubMed PubMed Citation