Individual differences in literary reading: Dimensions or categories

Abstract

Literary text reading has long been a subject of empirical research. Various measures of reader differences and reader typologies were suggested, with the most prominent being studies of literary expertise, and studies employing Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ; Miall & Kuiken, 1995). Literary expertise is difficult to define and fails to account for potential differences within non-experts. LRQ and similar dimensional approaches neglect the possibility that a salient reader typology does exist. The main goal of this study is to test whether a salient reader classification can be formed based on participant responses to questionnaires and to test how this classification corresponds to self-reported reader expertise. Based on responses from 741 participants (78.41% female, mean age = 24.31), we test the factor structure of LRQ in its Serbian translation and find moderate, acceptable fit. We also present our own Receptiveness to Literature Questionnaire (UPK) with two factors named Thorough Reading and Reading for Pleasure. Finally, we discuss relations between LRQ and UPK, offer classifications of readers formed on participant factor scores, and test the congruence between these classes and self-reported participant expertise. Our results indicate that a dimensional approach should be favored over forming categories of readers.

Building and Justifying Interpretations of Texts: A Key Practice in the English Language Arts

“…They labeled their two second-order factors trance (with positive loadings on empathy, imagery vividness, leisure escape, and story-driven reading) and literary interpretation (with positive loadings on insight and concern with author and negative loading on rejection of literary values). Similarly, Nenadić and Oljača (2019) replicated Miall and Kuiken's (1995) study with Serbian students. Like van Schooten et al (2001), they confirmed the seven underlying dimensions of the LRQ but failed to replicate Miall and Kuiken's (1995) second-order factors.…”

“…Like van Schooten et al (2001), they confirmed the seven underlying dimensions of the LRQ but failed to replicate Miall and Kuiken's (1995) second‐order factors. Nenadić and Oljača (2019) proposed and validated a simplified questionnaire, the Receptiveness to Literature Questionnaire, with two main dimensions: reading for pleasure (roughly comparable to van Schooten et al's, 2001, trance factor) and thorough reading (roughly comparable to van Schooten et al's literary interpretation factor).…”

Poetry-elicited emotions: Reading experience and psychological mechanisms.

“…Nonexpert readers tend to evaluate poems differently and more heterogeneously than expert readers (Nenadić et al, 2019), and also appear to enjoy reading less than expert readers (Dorfman, 1996). Nonetheless, it has been suggested that grouping readers into categories might not be as useful as approaching reading experience dimensionally (Nenadić & Oljača, 2019).…”

Research on Innovative Teaching Path of English Literature in Colleges and Universities Based on Multimodal Discourse Analysis

“…Literature has a clear thematic meaning, which can stimulate students' desire to explore, cultivate students' three-dimensional thinking, and develop their thinking quality [1]. At the level of literature reading teaching, the current use of popular science textbooks involves fewer literary texts, students have limited access to English literature, so teachers need to make full use of the existing literary texts, deeply stimulate students' interest in reading literature, and open the window of students' literature reading [2][3]. In literature reading teaching, teachers need to make efforts to stimulate students' curiosity, enhance the awareness of cultivating students' thinking ability, pay attention to the examination of students' thinking ability, reasonably select the content of thinking training in the teaching of the English subject, set teaching objectives, use reasonable teaching methods, and organize valuable thinking activities [4][5].…”