Using Temporal Information to Construct Situation Models of Narratives

The ultimate goal of the act of reading is to understand the text and gain knowledge. For this purpose, the cognitive system creates a two-dimensional mental representation of the event situations in the text during the reading process, namely, the text base and the situation model. The text base is the aggregation of words forming propositional structures; the structuring of the relations between propositions form the macro-text structure. However, text-based mental representations are not sufficient to understand the text; therefore, creating mental representations of the temporal and spatial location of event situations in the text and the situation model is necessary to provide information about the text entities. In this sense, situation models are mental processors that enable the integration of the mental representation of the web of relationships comprising the text with the readers’ world knowledge. However, as the amount of information that the working memory can process simultaneously is limited, the amount of information that one can use in forming the situation model is limited. For this reason, determining the variables used in the formation of the situation model and the projections of these variables on the surface structure of the text in terms of the reading and comprehension process is important. Therefore, this study aims to reveal whether the information about the temporal structure and aspects assumes a function in the processing of narrative texts and the formation of situation models in Turkish.