Orienting and reorienting in egocentric mental models

In a text, several objects may linguistically be localized relative to a pr otagonist, the orientation of which remains unchanged. Such a static descri ption yields a distinctive description perspective. On the other hand, the same layout can be described with the protagoist continually reorienting, w hile only objects are described which he is currently facing. Such a dynami c description does not yield an invariant description perspective. The spec ial character of the description perspective in egocentric mental models wa s experimentally confirmed. Two accounts are discussed to explain it. The f unctional account considers a difference in salience of egocentric directio ns before and after a first imagined reorientation. The representational ac count suggests that only an invariant orientation allows to maintain a ment al image in addition to the mental model.