The mental representation of narrative: All stories are not created equal

Paula Jane Waddill, Purdue University

Abstract

The present investigations employed sentence verification priming to investigate the memory representation of referential and causal relations in folk tales and in anecdotal narratives that described everyday events. Experiment 1 used both normally ordered and scrambled versions of texts. In both the normal and scrambled anecdotal narratives, target responses were faster after referentially related primes than after referentially unrelated primes in anecdotal narratives. No priming occurred in the backward direction, indicating that referential connections may be directional. No priming occurred for folk tales. Experiment 2 investigated the predicted superiority of causal connections over referential connections, the effect of distance, and the directionality of causal connections. The predicted effects were found for anecdotal narratives: target responses were faster after causal than referential primes and faster after directly related than indirectly related causal primes. The presence of forward and backward priming indicated that causal relations are represented as cause-effect regardless of their order of presentation in the story. No priming effects occurred for folk tales. Finally, Experiment 3 focused specifically on folk tales and considered the possibility that folk tale representations are organized around thematic relationships rather than local causal and referential connections. Results generally supported this hypothesis. Priming effects occurred for thematically central targets but were generally absent for thematically noncentral targets. The results are discussed in light of existing theories of narrative processing and event schemata.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

McDaniel, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Psychology|Experiments

COinS