Beatie (1979) has expressed disappointment that the use of computers in literary scholarship since the nineteen-sixties has not had the positive impact that originally had been predicted. In fact, the main application of computer assistance has been to the rather straightforward tasks of preparing word counts and text concordances. Other procedures that have been developed to aid in literary research have suffered from the limitation of difficulty in application to studies other than the one for which the procedure was first developed. Thus the procedures have not become standard ones with which others could check the research findings themselves or readily apply to the examination of other materials.An attempt to identify general factors determining the attractiveness of aesthetic objects has been made in the work of Berlyne (1960, 1972). The identification of the motivational effects of variables like novelty, surprisingness, uncertainty, conflict, and complexity have permitted comparative studies. The resulting effects are examined in the context of arousal theory of motivation, according to which organisms strive to attain optimal levels of stimulation. In another paper, Dember (1965) argued that objects and events which have a powerful impact on the behavior of persons or rats are those with a complexity value somehow matched to the processing capabilities of the individual. He supports his argument with evidence relating to the choice by rats of striped walls over plain ones and the taste of persons for poems of intermediate complexity. Further studies of the relation between the attractiveness of pictures and designs and their objective complexity have been reported by Bertyne (1974).C.W. Anderson and G.E. McMaster are associate professors, respectively in the A complication in the extension of arousal level theories of stimulus attractiveness from pictures to stories is that the elements in literature are presented serially and are invariably rich in meaning. Measurement of characteristics of narrative that might define variables to be used for comparison, like novelty and surprisingness, must treat changes over time and be affected by the abstract qualities of the words, not their physical nature.One approach to the question of why some stories are more interesting and enduring than others has been outlined by Beaugrande and Colby (1979). They document the complexity of the old folktale "Tom Tit Tot" by diagramming the motivational states and actions of the main characters in a flowchart of possibilities from the initial problem condition of the story through to its conclusion. Emphasis is placed upon the amount of cognitive processing demanded by the rich texture of problems and motivations presented in the story. Depending heavily upon subjective judgment, this technique cannot be applied to voluminous bodies of literature.Another characteristic of engaging narrative is an ebb and flow of emotional tension, traditionally expected to build toward a gratifying release near the end of well-crafted storie...
A test was made of the generality of the connotative meaning scores of evaluation, activity, and potency in a dictionary of the 1000 most frequent words in English that has been used as the basis of a computer system to measure the expression of emotional tone. This was done by correlating those scores with the values for evaluation and activity given for words also found in two independently created dictionaries, one based upon adults' ratings and one upon ratings by children. In replicated findings reported by the authors of the dictionary for adults' responses support for the generality of evaluation scores was more strong than that for activity scores. For the ratings by children the generality of both evaluation and activity dimensions received strong support.
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