Fahrat, S. & Tapiero, I.
Université Lumière Lyon 2
Previous experiments showed that some conditions like: memorization of a map before reading a text (Zwaan, Radvansky, Hilliard, & Curiel, 1998) or explicit instructions that elicit the reader to focus on spatial information, (Zwaan & Van Oostendorp, 1994) seemed necessary for the reader to take into account spatial dimension. In line with these experiments, we investigated how narrative perspectives (Cohn, 1978) might influence the accessibility and the processing of spatial information while reading a text. We contrasted three types of narrative points of view (internal, external and omniscient) and measured the effect of inconsistent spatial information on reading times according to the three narrative perspectives. We observed longer reading times for inconsistent information in the internal perspective compared to the two other. Our results confirmed that different perspectives have an effect on accessibility of information. More specifically, that internal perspective allowed a more specific representation of spatial dimension.