Readers' experiences of characters' goals and actions.

Abstract

In this article, the authors examined readers' sensitivity to the match between characters' goals and characters' actions. In Experiment 1, readers integrated actions consistent with characters' goals more easily when there was a match between the extremeness of the actions and the urgency of the goals. In Experiments 2 and 3, characters' actions were consistent with either explicit or implicit goals. Participants showed different sensitivity to the mismatch between actions and urgent goals when they simply read the actions (Experiment 2) versus when they judged the likelihood of the actions (Experiment 3). Taken together, these results offer an account of how readers experience actions and goals when engaged in both local and global processing.

How valence affects language processing: Negativity bias and mood congruence in narrative comprehension

“…However, this generalization holds for moment-by-moment integration processes, but not necessarily for reflective processes. Readers understand characters' actions in reference to a recent, local goal during moment-by-moment reading, and in reference to a more urgent, distal goal when formulating judgments (Egidi & Gerrig, 2006). Recent neuroimaging studies (e.g., Hasson, Nusbaum, & Small, 2006) also support the dissociation between natural comprehension and reflective processing of language, since these studies have shown that the two rely-at least partially-on different functional networks.…”

“…Reading often prompts integration with a large amount of information, especially when access to the distal portion of the text is necessary (Albrecht & Myers, 1995Gerrig & O'Brien, 2005), but such access does not always take place (Egidi & Gerrig, 2006;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992;O'Brien & Myers, 1999). In contrast, the judgment task that we used involves the formulation of a novel judgment (that presupposes successful integration) and by definition requires evaluating the ending of a story with respect to a large amount of information-that is, the entire story.…”

Just what is narrative urgency?

“…However, the particular body of psychological research drawn upon here is a series of journal publications which all, to some degree, investigate how readers experience and react to different stories or to different versions of the same story (Egidi and Gerrig 2006;Gerrig and Rapp 2004;Rapp and Gerrig 2006). A short overview of these studies follows, and thereafter the remainder of this section narrows in focus to consider one particular narrative mechanism which features in this collection of work.…”

“…In their study of the way reading times are influenced by characters' goals in a story, Egidi and Gerrig (2006: passim) argue that readers generally tend to identify with characters' goals the more 'urgently' those goals are narrated. More specifically, they point out that readers are 'responsive to the match between the urgency of characters' goals and the means characters take to achieve those goals' (Egidi andGerrig 2006: 1323). Elsewhere, they talk of 'urgent motivation' (1326), of 'mild and urgent goals ' (1325) and of goals of 'moderate or urgent importance ' (1326).…”

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Abstract: (around 250 words)This paper takes as its main point of departure a body of empirical research on reading and text processing, and makes particular reference to the type of experiments conducted in Egidi and Gerrig (2006) and Rapp and Gerrig (2006). Broadly put, these experiments (i) explore the psychology of readers' preferences for narrative outcomes, (ii) examine the way readers react to characters' goals and actions, and (iii) investigate how readers tend to identify with characters' goals the more 'urgently' those goals are narrated.

The present paper signals how stylistics can productively enrich such experimental work.

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