Openness to experience, absorption-like states, and the aesthetic, explanatory, and pragmatic effects of literary reading

Abstract

Although several measures of reading engagement (e.g., absorption, immersion) have been developed in recent years, the possibility that they reflect different constructs has not been systematically examined. The present study investigated two factorially independent forms of reading engagement measured by the Absorption-Like States Questionnaire (ASQ; Kuiken & Douglas, 2017, 2018). We examined whether (a) expressive enactment (ASQ-EE) and integrative comprehension (ASQ-IC) differentially predict aesthetic, explanatory, and pragmatic reading outcomes; (b) whether the components and outcomes of ASQ-EE and ASQ-IC differ from those of another measure of reading engagement (the Story World Absorption Scale, SWAS; Kuijpers et al., 2014), and (c) whether ASQ-EE and ASQ-IC are differentially related to two measures of trait openness to experience: the Tellegen Absorption Scale (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974) and the Big Five Aspects Scale for Openness/Intellect; DeYoung et al., 2007).

Children’s perspectives on being absorbed when reading fiction: A Q methodology study

“…Employing a child-centered approach, our Q methodology study identified four distinct perspectives on the lived experience of becoming “lost in a book” among autonomous readers aged 9–12 years. The study addressed multiple research gaps by systematically exploring children’s inner reading experiences which are generally understudied ( Wilhelm, 2016 ) and by contributing to the nascent debate on plurality in readers’ absorption ( Kuiken et al, 2022 ). Incorporating quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques and methods of analysis, we were able to systematically and rigorously study reading experience as shared within each emergent perspective and as varied across the four perspectives ( McKeown and Thomas, 2013 ).…”

“…To arrive at the items used in our Q study, the interview and focus groups transcripts and observational notes from the preliminary research were first openly coded and inductively analyzed by the second author of this article, who drew on her expertise in children and youth’s lived media experience and learning ( Neag and Supa, 2020 ; Ramsey et al, 2022 ). Throughout the process, importantly, this researcher remained naïve to any existing reading experience constructs related to absorption ( Kuijpers et al, 2021 ; Kuiken et al, 2022 ), reading motivation ( Wigfield and Guthrie, 1997 ), or children’s reading ‘pleasures’ ( Wilhelm, 2016 ) as reviewed above. Five inductive categories relevant to absorbed reading emerged from the preliminary analysis and interpretation, to which the researcher gave experience-centered labels: ‘living it,’ ‘imagining it,’ ‘feeling it,’ ‘reading it,’ and ‘experiencing closeness/otherness.’ These categories collectively represented shared patterns concerning a focal phenomenon, as this research phase focused on similarities rather than differences.…”

“…Narrative fiction experiences are relatively widely researched in studies with adult participants, particularly regarding literary texts and the effects of specific linguistic structures (Kuiken and Jacobs, 2021). One of the field's strongest endeavors in recent years has been the systematic study of readerly absorption (Hakemulder et al, 2017;Kuijpers et al, 2021;Kuijpers, 2022) and absorption-like states (Kuiken and Douglas, 2017;Kuiken et al, 2022). Competing with a number of close conceptual relatives such as narrative engagement (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009), flow (Thissen et al, 2018), immersion (Jacobs and Lüdtke, 2017) and so forth (for reviews see Kuijpers et al, 2021;Pianzola, 2021), absorption is an increasingly dominant multidimensional construct for describing sustained, intrinsically rewarding fiction reading.…”

“…The literature on absorption largely creates the impression that there is one universal way of being absorbed. As Kuiken et al (2022 , p. 2) note, “empirically substantiating differences between two or more theoretically independent modes of deeply engaged literary reading within the same population has not (…) been attempted.” As a start to such work, Kuiken and Douglas (2017; Kuiken et al, 2022 ) have developed the Absorption-like States Questionnaire (ASQ). This tool captures two different routes to “reflective and creative” absorption: expressive enactment (ASQ EE) and integrative comprehension (ASQ IC).…”

“…The latter is unusual as one’s self is assumed largely “lost” in reading as per the absorption literature ( Kuijpers et al, 2021 ). The different facets of absorption are indeed useful in interpreting various types of reading data across age groups and text genres, from experiments ( Mangen and Kuiken, 2014 ) to online reviews ( Rebora et al, 2021 ), although the Absorption-like States Questionnaire specifically was developed with “ difficult linguistic structures” ( Kuiken et al, 2022 ; our italics) in mind. However, the questionnaires as a tool, and their often intricate wordings (e.g., “my feelings were as ‘close’ for me as they were for the character whose point of view was being presented there;” Kuiken et al, 2022 ), may not be suitable for child-centered research.…”