空间情境模型中以观察者为中心的空间关系表征

Human being built and updated the representations of spatial distances and spatial relations between protagonist and the around things in language comprehension. The representations of the spatial relations in egocentric spatial situational models were important in spatial cognition, narrative comprehension and psycholinguistic. Using imagery searching paradigm, Franklin and Tversky (1990) studied the representations of the spatial relations in egocentric spatial situational models and found the standard RT pattern of searching the objects in different directions around the observer (front<back<left=right). But in his paradigm, there was focus bias that could brought out the standard RT pattern based on the findings in perceptual space(Hintzman, 1981). Eight experiments were conducted to distinguish the factors that affected the RT pattern in imagery searching. Rt. patterns in experiments 1, 2, 3, showed that there were two factors in identify which object was currently located beyond the observer's front, back, right, and left. The first factor (called direction effect) was for identifying the referred direction of probing noun, with a pattern of process time front<back<right=left. the second factor (called relative position effect) was for putting the attention to the goal direction to identify the goal object, with a pattern of process time focus<opposition to focus<count-clockwise next to focus=clockwise next to focus. These two factors were independent to each other. These results supported that there are two kinds of spatial relations in egocentric framework: Body-Object relation and Object-Object relation. Without relation position effect, the standard RT pattern was found in reacting to direction nouns in Experiment 4, whereas another RT pattern (left=right=front<back) was found in reacting to direction arrows Experiment 5. These results supported this hypothesis: The mapping of conceptual representation (direction nouns) to perceptual representation (the position of objects around body) was required in searching task (from direction nouns to objects). The mapping needs the body of observer as reference frame. The body are designed asymmetry, so there are effects of direction, while as The arrows pointing to four directions around body map directly to the position around body; In spatial memory, the difficulty of retrieving objects in front, back, right or left is different(front=right=left<back.). In Experiments 7, 8, another RT pattern (focus<count-clockwise next to focus = clockwise next to focus< opposition to focus) came with the 45 degree count-clockwise rotation of the objects around the body. The reason of the effect of relative locations of target object to focused object was that, the canonical axis constructed spatial representation, as consequence, front-back, right-left directions represents near than other pairs. So from front to back, from back to front, from right to left or from left to right, is quick than other pairs. With the 45-degree count-clockwise rotation of the objects around the body, the geometric distance between them determined the psychological distance between two objects. As a conclusion, the structural natures of the spatial representation determined the nature of spatial relations.