GERNSBACHER, M. A. (1994). Activating knowledge of fictional characters’ emotional states. In C. A. Weaver, S. Mannes, & C. R. Fletcher (Eds.), Discourse comprehension: Essays in honor of Walter Kintsch (pp. 141-155). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

One of Kintsch’s most prominent contributions to the understanding of discourse comprehension is his proposal that comprehenders build situational models. Kintsch introduced his theoretical concept of situational models in the following way: “A major feature of our model [of discourse comprehension] is the assumption that discourse understanding involves not only the representation of a textbase in episodic memory, but at the same time, the activation, updating, and other uses of a so-called situation model in episodic memory: This is the cognitive representation of the events, actions, persons and in general the situation, a text is about” (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, pg. 337).