ABSTRACT
In order to summarize a story it is necessary to access a high level analysis of the story that highlights its central concepts. A technique of memory representation based on plot units appears to provide a rich foundation for such an analysis. Plot units are conceptual structures that overlap with each other when a narrative is cohesive. When overlapping intersections between plot units are interpreted as arcs in a graph whose nodes are plot units, the resulting graph encodes the plot structure of the story. Structural features of the graph reveal which concepts are central to the story, and which concepts are peripheral. Plot unit analysis is currently being investigated as a processing strategy for narrative summarization by both computer simulation and psychological experiments.
