Publisher Summary This chapter reviews that spatial descriptions spontaneously construct
spatial mental models of the described scenes as a natural consequence of reading for …

Spatial descriptions symbolically represent environmental information through language
and are written in two primary perspectives: survey, analogous to viewing a map, and route …

Mental models of text are representations of what the text is about (ie, situations), rather than
representations of the text itself. Many mental model theories propose that mental models …

In four experiments, subjects read route or survey descriptions of naturalistic environments
and then answered verbatim or inference questions from both perspectives and drew maps …

Spatial language is widely used, both literally to describe space and figuratively to express a
broad range of ideas. This article reviews two projects studying the nature of mental …

In the past several years, there has been an acceleration in the publication of cognitive
research on the interplay between linguistic and pictorial/spatial information. To report on …

Conducted 3 experiments with 104 undergraduates to assess Ss' abilities to infer and
organize perceptual information from the context of a spatial event. After viewing a …

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 …

Historically, much of the experimental research on spatial cognition has involved the use of
small-scale or model environments. The primary goal of this work was to assess an …

Three experiments with 41 undergraduates investigated how information about geographic
environments is processed. In Exp I, response time to decide which of 2 pairs of states or …