Abstract

Suppose you read a novel twice. The odds are high that you will read it faster during the second reading. This is known as a text repetition effect. This study examined the factors that facilitate rereading. To explain text repetition effects, Raney(2003) proposed a context-dependent representation model. The basic assumptions of the model are that the surface features and textbase are represented in a context-independent manner, and that a coherent situation model binds together the surface features and the text base and leads to context-dependent representation. When a situation model is well developed, overlapping situation models support a rereading benefit. Little or no repetition benefit is expected, when situation models are well developed but there is no semantic overlap between them. In this case, repeating surface forms and textbase will not produce repetition effects. This experiment explored whether rereading effects transfer across two different languages. Fluent Korean-German bilinguals read texts twice either in the same language or in the different, while the texts shared either only the words or also the situations. Repetition effects were found only for texts, in which situation models were preserved, although the translations altered the surface form and textbase. This results demonstrate that the role of a situation model is important for bilingual repetition effects, and that the context-dependent model provides a theoretically meaningful guide for understanding and explaining text repetition effects.