The Effect of Perceptual and Personal Memory Retrieval on Story Comprehension

Abstract

This study focused on the relationship between personal perceptual memory and story comprehension. In two experiments, participants read story texts. Half the participants were asked to retrieve highly vivid perceptual memories (Exp. 1) or autobiographical memories as highly perceptual and personal memories (Exp. 2) before reading a story, and the other half were asked to retrieve less vivid perceptual memories, as a control task, before reading. Results showed that participants read more slowly under the highly perceptual memory retrieval condition only when their experiences were relatively similar to the experiences depicted in the story. Additionally, similarity between story content and participants' experiences was positively correlated with enjoyment of the story in both experiments. We interpreted the results as indicating that individuals are involved in emotional processes when they are able to integrate their own perceptual memories into the story content. Personal perceptual memory also appeared to contribute to story comprehension.

Gender-based violence in Latin America (Ecuador and Argentina): current state and challenges in the development of psychoeducational materials

“…The processing of discourse and the generation of emotion inferences have also been found to facilitate that comprehenders experience emotions [72,80,81]. Prior studies suggest that these emotions promote that the comprehender engages with the material [80,82]. Other investigations have highlighted that discourse comprehension can be facilitated when comprehenders are asked to answer elaborative questions (such as 'why do you think that the statement you just read makes sense?'…”

Personal Relevance in Story Reading

“…It is proposed that this finding indicates a particular emotion up-regulation mechanism (see also Menninghaus et al 2017), activated in the observed encounters with negative contents in fiction. In a study conducted by Tsunemi and Kusumi (2011) participants were given a task before reading a short story: one group had to generate perceptually rich personal memories, thus activating self-schema, whereas the other group had to play a word game, a task unrelated to the self. When the researchers compared how much time the participants needed to read the story, they found that reading times increased for those who had generated perceptual memories.…”