Date of Graduation

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Bill Levine

Committee Member

Tim Cavell

Second Committee Member

JoAnn D'Alisera

Third Committee Member

A. Burcu Bayram

Abstract

Narrativity and object association have been extensively researched in the past to determine how changes in a text impact reader interpretation. In this research, we attempted to establish a relationship between the relation of an object to a character situated in a particular narrative context and the detection of inconsistencies presented in the given story. Participants read texts that either associated or dissociated an object with a character, within a high or low-narrative context. Reading times were measured on critical sentences that were inconsistent with the placement of previously dissociated objects. When presented with object inconsistencies in highly narrative stories, participants took longer to read critical sentences than they did when objects were consistently associated with a character. The results are discussed in the larger context of mental processing frameworks like the RI-Val model as they pertain to reading narratives.

Keywords

Situation models; narrativity; RI-Val model; reading; language processing

Download

Share

COinS