SITUATION MODELS IN LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION AND MEMORY

This article reviews research on the use of situation models in langua ge comprehension and memory retrieval over the past 15 years. Situatio n models are integrated mental representations of a described state of affairs. Significant progress has been made in the scientific underst anding of how situation models are involved in language comprehension and memory retrieval. Much of this research focuses on establishing th e existence of situation models, often by using tasks that assess one dimension of a situation model. However, the authors argue that the ti me has now come for researchers to begin to take the multidimensionali ty of situation models seriously. The authors offer a theoretical fram ework and some methodological observations that may help researchers t o tackle this issue.