Reconstruction of the situation model as a basis for understanding narrative discourse

Voronin A. N., Goryunova N. B.

The article discusses various concepts of discourse processing that explain the understanding and interpretation of the narrative. It is shown that the reconstruction of the mental model of the situation is a key aspect of the processing of narrative discourse and includes a surface model, a textual basis and an abstract representation as a generalization of the previous stages, correlated with individual experience. At all stages of the reconstruction of the mental model of the situation, in the course of comparison, shift, activation of background knowledge and ignoring irrelevant information, the model is corrected and updated. The paradigm of situational models of narrative understanding and the empirical studies based on it confirm the concept of “embodied cognition”, according to which cognitive activity is based on perceptual and motor representations.

Keywords:representation, reconstruction, situational model, discourse, cognitive processing.