Abstract
The revival of interest in imagery within the field of cognitive psychology forced researchers involved in the study of prose processing mechanisms to take into account the potential role of visual imagery in comprehension and memory for texts. The growth of this field of study was to a great extent fostered by the existence of a considerable body of research on text processing (cf. Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). More recently, assumptions regarding the role of ‘mental models’ (Garnham, 1981; Johnson-Laird, 1983) or ‘situation models’ (Kintsch, 1985; Perrig & Kintsch, 1985) in prose comprehension have placed increasing emphasis on imagery processes. Visual imagery appears as a likely candidate for the construction of models of spatial configurations described in a text (e.g., Mani & Johnson-Laird, 1982; Perrig & Kintsch, 1985). An overview of the literature on this issue shows that the intersection of imagery research and prose processing studies has indeed produced valuable empirical and theoretical findings and has been beneficial to both fields (for a more comprehensive review, see Denis, 1984).
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Denis, M. (1987). Individual Imagery Differences and Prose Processing. In: McDaniel, M.A., Pressley, M. (eds) Imagery and Related Mnemonic Processes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4676-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4676-3_9
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