From Words to Worlds: Twenty-Five Years of Advances in Situation Model Research

Rolf A. Zwaan

doi:10.1177/09637214251326812

From Words to Worlds: Twenty-Five Years of Advances in Situation Model Research

Rolf A. Zwaan^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Brain & Cognition

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

30 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Situation models—mental representations formed during comprehension—have evolved significantly beyond their origin in text-based research. Situation models are now used in accounts of comprehension across various media, including films, comics, and even real-world events. This article reviews four key developments in comprehension research over the past 25 years: grounded cognition, multitext comprehension, visual media comprehension, and everyday event comprehension. In all these lines of research, situation models continue to play an important role.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	287-292
Number of pages	6
Journal	Current Directions in Psychological Science
Volume	34
Issue number	5
Early online date	10 Apr 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251326812
Publication status	Published - Oct 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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From Words to Worlds: Twenty-Five Years of Advances in Situation Model Research

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