Situation Models and Levels of Coherence

The mental representation of what one reads is called a "situation model" or a "mental model." The process of reading causes an interaction of the new knowledge with what is already known. Though a number of theories and models have been proposed to describe this interaction, Tapiero proposes a new model that assumes a variety of storage areas to p

Contents: Preface. W. Kintsch, Foreword. Part I:Text Comprehension: What Kind of Mental Representation Does the Reader Build? The Internal"Objects" of Situation Models. Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Two Main Levels of Representation: Referential and Causal Coherence. Situation Models as Integrated Representations: What Kind of Model Does the Reader Build? Part II: What Cognitive Mechanisms Are Involved in the Elaboration of a Situation Model? Current Theories of Comprehension: The Main Processes Involved in Mental-Representation Building by the Reader. Current Theories of Text Comprehension: What About Coherence? Part III: Contribution of the Reader's Knowledge in the Establishment of Global Coherence. Establishing Global Coherence: The Account for the Reader's Naive Theories of Causality.The Reader's Mental Representation: Search for Coherence or Passive Resonance? Part IV: Contribution of the Reader's Knowledge and Multidimensional Aspect of Situation Models: Importance of Causality and Emotion. Causal Inferences in the Reading Comprehension Process.Emotion and Text Comprehension.Are Some Dimensions More Crucial Than Others? Toward a Definition of Comprehension.