Cognitive Processes in Reading Literary Texts: The Influence of Context, Goals and Situations

Abstract

Is literary meaning amenable to an explanation within the cognitive paradigm of psychology? A convention-oriented explanation exists as opposed to an autonomous ontology of meaning. The central difficulty of explanation is its lack of empirical bases. The hypothesis that encoding-which is action and goal specific -and retrieval are activated by specific conventions and caused by different types of elaboration and inference is tested. The dependent variables were studied in a 2 X 2 free recall experiment. The hypothesis mentioned was tested in a 2 X 2 X 2 recognition experiment. The results for a cognitive conception of literary meaning are significant. The methodological and theoretical conseq uences are discussed. 115