Visuospatial cues for reinstating mental models in working memory during interrupted reading.

Reading involves constructing a mental representation in long-term working memory of the world described by the text. Disrupting short-term working memory can interfere with the maintenance of mental models (sets of retrieval cues) needed to access these representations, producing detrimental effects on reading time. In two experiments, subjects read passages that included pairs of coreferential sentences interrupted by unrelated text. As in previous research, reading times increased for the first sentence after the interruption, likely reflecting a reinstatement process for mental models in working memory. In the present research, pictures were provided as visuospatial cues to aid the reinstatement process. The interruption effect was found to be smaller with pictures related to the passages than with unrelated pictures (Experiment 1) or titles (Experiment 2); however, both of these effects occurred only for slow readers. The authors hypothesize that slow readers take the time needed to integrate visuospatial information into their mental models, providing more resilient access to long-term working memory.