Factors In Processing Narrative Time Shifts

The question about how readers deal with temporal information to integrate events into situation model with proper order is what cognitive psychologists concern. Recent researchers concerned about theories of situation model. The time dimension is one of importance.An example of constructing situation-model is event-indexing model (Zwaan, 1999a etc.). According to the Event-indexing Model, readers construct situation models from text by extracting events from the text and integrating them on five different situational dimensions: time, space, causation, motivation, and protagonist. The Event-indexing Model explains how readers construct, update and retrieve situation model. We are restricting our focus to the temporal dimension. Some theories explain the effect of temporal information differently. Scenarios Model (Anderson, 1983) thinks temporal information is a kind of clue to shift current scenario. Whenever scenario shifts, time shifting makes. Strong Iconicity Model(Zwaan, 1996) thinks whenever time adverbial has break, then there is a time shifting. It has no relation between scenario and time shifting. We regard Strong Iconicity Model as the better one to explain reading comprehension. Our thesis is base on the Strong IconicityAssumption. This thesis modifies Zwaan's Strong Iconicity Model and explores the temporal dimension of the Event-indexing Model, It tries to combine Anderson's Scenarios Model (1983) with the Strong Iconicity Assumption. The thesis explores recent theory of situation-model. It should have some practical meaning.We make three suggestions: reader will concern the lapse of scenario to judge whether temporal information to make time shift; temporal information implying discontinuousness can make time shift; temporal information in the same scenario of material organized by events can not make time shift. Three experiments obtain some results as following:Discontinuous temporal information may not produce time shift until its lapse reaches the ratio between the lapse of temporal information and the lapse of scenario.Implicit discontinuous temporal information may make time shift. We regard imperfect tense as implicit discontinuous temporal information. It prove to show time shift effects.There is an effect of experiment material on reader understanding temporal information. When experiment material is organized by events, the task of readers' comprehension is different with material organized by actions. Discontinuous temporal information in the same scenario can not make time shift.