INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SPATIAL FRAMEWORKS FOR REPRESENTING DESCRIBED SCENES

Four experiments explored readers' mental models of described scenes. Environments were described from one of two perspectives, an internal perspective of an observer within the scene, surrounded by objects, or an external perspective of an observer outside the scence, with objects in front. Subjects read narratives describing a scene and were probed for locations of objects. In the general case, reaction times to identify objects were fastest for the head/feet (above/below) axis, then the front/back (front/behind) axis, and then the left/right axis, conforming to the spatial framework analysis which reflects people's conceptions of space based on typical interactions in space. For the internal spatial framework, readers were faster to questions of front than back, reflecting the perceptual and biological asymmetries that favor an observer's front. For the external spatial framework, all objects were in front of the observer and readers were equally fast to questions of front and behind. The difference between internal and external spatial framework reflects the different perceptual experience of observers in the two perspectives. The two variants of the spatial framework allowed us to infer readers' spatial perspective for narratives with unspecified perspectives. © 1992.