Empirical Research on Understanding Literature

Hauptmeier, Helmut; Meutsch, Dietrich; Viehoff, Reinhold

doi:10.2307/1772905

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…How and to what extent those factors influence the literariness of the reading experience has been a matter of debate. According to the text-oriented perspective (e.g., [1]), text features are independent of readers and can be more or less literary. The reader-oriented perspective (e.g., [2]), however, claims that the (perceived) literariness depends on a reader's attention to certain aspects of the text.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Style During Literary Reading: Insights from Eye-Tracking

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Style is an important aspect of literature, and stylistic deviations are sometimes labeled foregrounded, since their manner of expression deviates from the stylistic default. Russian Formalists have claimed that foregrounding increases processing demands and therefore causes slower reading -an effect called retardation. We tested this claim experimentally by having participants read short literary stories while measuring their eye movements. Our results confirm that readers indeed read slower and make more regressions towards foregrounded passages as compared to passages that are not foregrounded. A closer look, however, reveals significant individual differences in sensitivity to foregrounding. Some readers in fact do not slow down at all when reading foregrounded passages. The slowing down effect for literariness was related to a slowing down effect for high perplexity (unexpected) words: those readers who slowed down more during literary passages also slowed down more during high perplexity words, even though no correlation between literariness and perplexity existed in the stories. We conclude that individual differences play a major role in processing of literary texts and argue for accounts of literary reading that focus on the interplay between reader and text.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Style During Literary Reading: Insights from Eye-Tracking

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One group has essentially continued the line of investigation begun by Richards, in which literary texts are given to subjects, and their verbal responses are recorded either in writing or on tape (Rosenblatt 1964(Rosenblatt , 1969Bleich 1967Bleich , 1969Bleich , 1971Holland 1973Holland , 1975Kintgen 1983;Miall 1988;Peskin 1998). The second group has introduced greater experimental control into the empirical investigation of literature, with more formal definitions of text segments, subjects' tasks and rating scales (Ben-Porat 1978Meutsch and Schmidt 1985;Hauptmeier et al 1989; Van Peer 1983Andringa 1990;Glicksohn, Tsur and Goodblatt 1991;Miall and Kuiken 1994;Steen 1994). This empirical dimension of reader-response criticism thus represents the attempt to integrate psychology, linguistics and literary criticism into an interdisciplinary study of literary texts and readers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adding an empirical dimension to the study of poetic metaphor

2001

Jlse

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper applies the rigorous experimental approach of cognitive psychology to the study of poetic metaphor and to the process of its comprehension by the real reader. The theoretical framework underlying this paper integrates the paradigm established by Gestalt psychology with the Interaction theory of metaphor. Twenty-four subjects were given a questionnaire to complete, in which they first rated metaphors in three poetic texts on a series of four 7-point rating scales, and then prepared a written response to a series of questions. This study therefore contributes to an understanding of the reading process, by suggesting different reading strategies adopted by various subjects, including an integration of alternative readings in order to fill semantic gaps, a simplification of structure through a use of local comparisons, and the elaboration of the structure through the addition of a semantic field.

show abstract

Text understanding — A self-organizing cognitive process

Schmidt¹

1991

Poetics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Empirical Research on Understanding Literature

Cited by 17 publications

References 44 publications

Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Style During Literary Reading: Insights from Eye-Tracking

Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Style During Literary Reading: Insights from Eye-Tracking

Adding an empirical dimension to the study of poetic metaphor

Text understanding — A self-organizing cognitive process

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About