ANAPHORA RESOLUTION AND THE FOCUS OF ATTENTION IN SITUATION MODELS

Four experiments investigated how the accessibility of a referent for an anaphoric noun pharase decreases with the spatial distance of the r eferent from the focus of attention within a situation model. In all e xperiments, subjects first memorized the diagram of a building and obj ects located in it, then read narratives describing characters activit ies in that building. The narratives contained motion sentences descri bing how the protagonist moved from room to room through the building. Accessibility of referents was probed by undistinguished ''target'' s entences that followed the motion sentences. Each target sentence cont ained a definite noun phrase that referred to a memorized object in on e of the building's rooms (''He thought that the shelves still looked like an awful mess''). Reading times of target sentences increased wit h the number of rooms between the object and the protagonist, suggesti ng that accessibility of the referent decreased with spatial distance between the referent and the focus of attention in the readers' situat ion model. Experiment 1 showed faster access to referents when target sentences mentioned the room in which the referent was located. Experi ment 2 compared motion sentences that explicitly mentioned the protago nist's movement to sentences that mentioned only the protagonist's fin al location. Similar effects of distance from focus to referent were f ound, suggesting that readers use situation models to infer movements not explicitly mentioned in the text. Experiment 3 demonstrated that t he results were not caused by unexpected or confusing discourse. Exper iment 4 showed that the results could not be explained by temporal ord er of studying the rooms during learning instead of spatial distance. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.