Cargando…

The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations

Language can be viewed as a set of cues that modulate the comprehender’s thought processes. It is a very subtle instrument. For example, the literature suggests that people perceive direct speech (e.g., Joanne said: ‘I went out for dinner last night’) as more vivid and perceptually engaging than ind...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Eerland, Anita, Engelen, Jan A. A., Zwaan, Rolf A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23776488
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065480
_version_ 1782273134411382784
author Eerland, Anita
Engelen, Jan A. A.
Zwaan, Rolf A.
author_facet Eerland, Anita
Engelen, Jan A. A.
Zwaan, Rolf A.
author_sort Eerland, Anita
collection PubMed
description Language can be viewed as a set of cues that modulate the comprehender’s thought processes. It is a very subtle instrument. For example, the literature suggests that people perceive direct speech (e.g., Joanne said: ‘I went out for dinner last night’) as more vivid and perceptually engaging than indirect speech (e.g., Joanne said that she went out for dinner last night). But how is this alleged vividness evident in comprehenders’ mental representations? We sought to address this question in a series of experiments. Our results do not support the idea that, compared to indirect speech, direct speech enhances the accessibility of information from the communicative or the referential situation during comprehension. Neither do our results support the idea that the hypothesized more vivid experience of direct speech is caused by a switch from the visual to the auditory modality. However, our results do show that direct speech leads to a stronger mental representation of the exact wording of a sentence than does indirect speech. These results show that language has a more subtle influence on memory representations than was previously suggested.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-3680483
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2013
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-36804832013-06-17 The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations Eerland, Anita Engelen, Jan A. A. Zwaan, Rolf A. PLoS One Research Article Language can be viewed as a set of cues that modulate the comprehender’s thought processes. It is a very subtle instrument. For example, the literature suggests that people perceive direct speech (e.g., Joanne said: ‘I went out for dinner last night’) as more vivid and perceptually engaging than indirect speech (e.g., Joanne said that she went out for dinner last night). But how is this alleged vividness evident in comprehenders’ mental representations? We sought to address this question in a series of experiments. Our results do not support the idea that, compared to indirect speech, direct speech enhances the accessibility of information from the communicative or the referential situation during comprehension. Neither do our results support the idea that the hypothesized more vivid experience of direct speech is caused by a switch from the visual to the auditory modality. However, our results do show that direct speech leads to a stronger mental representation of the exact wording of a sentence than does indirect speech. These results show that language has a more subtle influence on memory representations than was previously suggested. Public Library of Science 2013-06-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3680483/ /pubmed/23776488 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065480 Text en © 2013 Eerland et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Eerland, Anita
Engelen, Jan A. A.
Zwaan, Rolf A.
The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations
title The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations
title_full The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations
title_fullStr The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations
title_full_unstemmed The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations
title_short The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Mental Representations
title_sort influence of direct and indirect speech on mental representations
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23776488
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065480
work_keys_str_mv AT eerlandanita theinfluenceofdirectandindirectspeechonmentalrepresentations
AT engelenjanaa theinfluenceofdirectandindirectspeechonmentalrepresentations
AT zwaanrolfa theinfluenceofdirectandindirectspeechonmentalrepresentations
AT eerlandanita influenceofdirectandindirectspeechonmentalrepresentations
AT engelenjanaa influenceofdirectandindirectspeechonmentalrepresentations
AT zwaanrolfa influenceofdirectandindirectspeechonmentalrepresentations