The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 59 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Situation models, mental simulations, and abstract concepts in discourse comprehension
Open accessAbstract
This article sets out to examine the role of symbolic and sensorimotor representations in discourse comprehension. It starts out with a review of the literature on situation models, showing how mental representations are constrained by linguistic and situational factors. These ideas are then extended to more explicitly include sensorimotor representations. Following Zwaan and Madden (2005), the author argues that sensorimotor and symbolic representations mutually constrain each other in discourse comprehension. These ideas are then developed further to propose two roles for abstract concepts in discourse comprehension. It is argued that they serve as pointers in memory, used (1) cataphorically to integrate upcoming information into a sensorimotor simulation, or (2) anaphorically integrate previously presented information into a sensorimotor simulation. In either case, the sensorimotor representation is a specific instantiation of the abstract concept.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Barsalou, L. W. (1999) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x99002149 · Cited by 6,887
Strategies of Discourse Comprehension
Staczek, J. J., van Dijk, T. A., & Kintsch, W. (1985) · The Modern Language Journal · doi:10.2307/326517 · Cited by 5,395
Toward a model of text comprehension and production.
Kintsch, W., & van Dijk, T. A. (1978) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.85.5.363 · Cited by 5,298
(1998) · Cited by 4,875
Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness
Ford, M., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1985) · Language · doi:10.2307/414498 · Cited by 4,419
The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: A construction-integration model.
Kintsch, W. (1988) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.95.2.163 · Cited by 4,363
Harnad, S. (1990) · Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena · doi:10.1016/0167-2789(90)90087-6 · Cited by 4,235 · cited 2×
“…research of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s was the introduction of the construct of a mental model or situation model (Bower & Morrow, 1990; Bransford, Barclay, & Franks, 1972; Glenberg, Meyer, & Lindem, 1987; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Kintsch, 1998; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998).”
BackgroundEricsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.102.2.211 · Cited by 3,498
Integration of Visual and Linguistic Information in Spoken Language Comprehension
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., & Sedivy, J. C. (1995) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.7777863 · Cited by 2,929
Hockett, C. F. (1960) · Scientific American · doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0960-88 · Cited by 1,283
Cited by
The challenge of abstract concepts.
Borghi, A. M., Binkofski, F., Castelfranchi, C., Cimatti, F., Scorolli, C., & Tummolini, L. (2017) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000089 · Cited by 503
On staying grounded and avoiding quixotic dead ends
Barsalou, L. W. (2016) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1028-3 · Cited by 331
Language Model Behavior: A Comprehensive Survey
Chang, T. A., & Bergen, B. K. (2024) · Computational Linguistics · doi:10.1162/coli_a_00492 · Cited by 105
Abstract Concepts and the Embodied Mind: Rethinking Grounded Cognition
Dove, G. (2022) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190061975.001.0001 · Cited by 40
Situation model building ability uniquely predicts first and second language reading comprehension
Raudszus, H., Segers, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2019) · Journal of Neurolinguistics · doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2018.11.003 · Cited by 38
Metadata
- Authors
- Zwaan, R. A.
- Venue
- Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
- Published
- 2015-06-19
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1028-1034
- ISSN
- 1069-9384 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-5320
- OpenAlex
- W560289989
- Cited by
- 330
- References
- 59
- FWCI
- 16.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Situation models, mental simulations, and abstract concepts in discourse comprehension. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.3758/s13423-015-0864-x
- The paper
- Zwaan, R. A. (2016). Situation models, mental simulations, and abstract concepts in discourse comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0864-x
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.