Abstract: The study was to examine the role of temporal information in the construction of situation models, and to explore whether the participants could integrate the related facts into the situation models in a time-based fashion. Sswere 112 university students (Exp 1,2 and 3) in South China Normal University, China. It was probed in Experiment 1 and Experimental 2 that whether the participants could integrate definite and indefinite temporal information into situation models while there were clear spatial information, and whether they could integrate definite temporal information into situation models without clear spatial information in Experiment 3. The retrieval interference methodology was used to assess whether they integrated the related facts into situation models or not. The presence of interference indicated a lack of integration. In contrast, an absence or marked reduction in interference indicated integration. The results of three experiments all showed that the evidence of time-based integration was observed when the related events occurred at the same time. The results also implied that the temporal information alone in the reading materials would be sufficient for the participants to construct time-based situation models in the circumstances of no clear spatial information.

Key words: situation models, temporal information, fan effect, discourse reading