Prior knowledge of character locational stereotypes and representations during text comprehension

Certain character locational stereotypes are expected to affect constructions of mental representations during text comprehension. The present study examined whether readers’ prior knowledge of character locational stereotypes affects the construction of these character representations during text comprehension. Two short stories were presented to the participants. In one story, God, and two people wearing blue and green clothes, respectively, appeared in a room in that order (God condition). In the other, three people appeared in red, blue, and green clothes, respectively (three-people condition). The only difference between the two stories was the first character that appeared in the room. All participants were assigned to either the God or three-people condition. Participants read the story and provided an account of their own mental representation of where the three characters were located within the room, and explained the reasoning behind their descriptions. In the God condition, most participants stated that God was in the center (relative to the two people) because of locational stereotypes of God. In the three-people condition, most participants stated that the person in red was located in front of or closest to the participant because of the order in which the character appeared in the text. These results show that readers’ prior knowledge of character locational stereotypes affects their mental representation of spatial relationships between characters during text comprehension.