The Influence of Mental Imagery Instructions and Personality Characteristics on Reading Experiences

Mak, Marloes; Vries, Clarissa de; Willems, Roel M.

doi:10.1525/collabra.281

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(100 reference statements)

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“…Implicit instructions to use imagination when reading a story and individual's vividness of imagery predict the ability to become absorbed in a story (Mak, de Vries, & Willems, 2020). Yet, it is unclear to what extent this increased absorption is due to increased mental simulation.…”

Section: Individual Differences In Imagery: From Aphantasia To Hyperp...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

Ibáñez¹,

Kühne²,

Miklashevsky³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Embodied theories of cognition consider many aspects of language and other cognitive domains as the result of sensory and motor processes. In this view, the appraisal and the use of concepts are based on mechanisms of simulation grounded on prior sensorimotor experiences. Even though these theories continue receiving attention and support, increasing evidence indicates the need to consider the flexible nature of the simulation process, and to accordingly refine embodied accounts. In this consensus paper, we discuss two potential sources of variability in experimental studies on embodiment of language: individual differences and context. Specifically, we show how factors contributing to individual differences may explain inconsistent findings in embodied language phenomena. These factors include sensorimotor or cultural experiences, imagery, context-related factors, and cognitive strategies. We also analyze the different contextual modulations, from single words to sentences and narratives, as well as the top-down and bottom-up influences. Similarly, we review recent efforts to include cultural and language diversity, aging, neurodegenerative diseases, and brain disorders, as well as bilingual evidence into the embodiment framework. We address the importance of considering individual differences and context in clinical studies to drive translational research more efficiently, and we indicate recommendations on how to correctly address these issues in future research. Systematically investigating individual differences and context may contribute to understanding the dynamic nature of simulation in language processes, refining embodied theories of cognition, and ultimately filling the gap between cognition in artificial experimental settings and cognition in the wild (i.e., in everyday life).

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Section: Individual Differences In Imagery: From Aphantasia To Hyperp...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

Ibáñez¹,

Kühne²,

Miklashevsky³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This seems particularly desirable in view of similar recent experiments which observed a stronger impact of rather stable reader traits on experience and processing of narratives than state-level variables, i.e., narrative voice of reading stimuli and mental imagery instructions during reading, respectively (Hartung et al, 2017a;Mak et al, 2020). The available evidence suggests that the effects of reading short narratives is, to a relatively large degree, determined by pre-existing reader traits, and less so, if at all, by state variables including textual variations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Reading Fictional Narratives to Improve Social and Moral Cognition: The Influence of Narrative Perspective, Transportation, and Identification

et al. 2021

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There is a long tradition in philosophy and literary criticism of belief in the social and moral benefits of exposure to fiction, and recent empirical work has examined some of these claims. However, little of this research has addressed the textual features responsible for the hypothesized cognitive effects. We present two experiments examining whether readers’ social and moral cognition are influenced by the perspective from which a narrative is told (voice and focalization), and whether potential effects of perspective are mediated by transportation into the story or by identification with the protagonist. Both experiments employed a between-subjects design in which participants read a short story, either in the first-person voice using internal focalization, third-person voice using internal focalization, or third-person voice using external focalization. Social and moral cognition was assessed using a battery of tasks. Experiment 1 (N = 258) failed to detect any effects of perspective or any mediating roles of transportation or identification. Implementing a more rigorous adaptation of the third-person story using external focalization, Experiment 2 (N = 262) largely replicated this pattern. Taken together, the evidence reported here suggests that perspective does not have a significant impact on the extent to which narratives modulate social and moral cognition, either directly or indirectly via transportation and identification.

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“…The first study (Mak & Willems, 2019 ) investigated different kinds of mental simulation during narrative reading, the second study (Eekhof et al, 2018 ) tested the influence of verb tense on mental simulation during literary reading, and the third study (Mak et al, 2020 ) investigated the influence of prereading instructions on reported mental imagery and other subjective reading experiences.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…that we adapted from Knoop and colleagues ( 2016 ). Studies 2 (Eekhof et al, 2018 ) and 3 (Mak et al, 2020 ) both omitted one adjective from the list (Study 2: Special ; Study 3: Entertaining ), resulting in 11 adjectives that were included in the lists in all three studies. The resulting 11 adjectives that were included in the analysis can be found in Table 3 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different routes to liking: how readers arrive at narrative evaluations

2022

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When two people read the same story, they might both end up liking it very much. However, this does not necessarily mean that their reasons for liking it were identical. We therefore ask what factors contribute to “liking” a story, and—most importantly—how people vary in this respect. We found that readers like stories because they find them interesting, amusing, suspenseful and/or beautiful. However, the degree to which these components of appreciation were related to how much readers liked stories differed between individuals. Interestingly, the individual slopes of the relationships between many of the components and liking were (positively or negatively) correlated. This indicated, for instance, that individuals displaying a relatively strong relationship between interest and liking, generally display a relatively weak relationship between sadness and liking. The individual differences in the strengths of the relationships between the components and liking were not related to individual differences in expertize, a characteristic strongly associated with aesthetic appreciation of visual art. Our work illustrates that it is important to take into consideration the fact that individuals differ in how they arrive at their evaluation of literary stories, and that it is possible to quantify these differences in empirical experiments. Our work suggests that future research should be careful about “overfitting” theories of aesthetic appreciation to an “idealized reader,” but rather take into consideration variations across individuals in the reason for liking a particular story.

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The Influence of Mental Imagery Instructions and Personality Characteristics on Reading Experiences

Cited by 15 publications

References 55 publications

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

Reading Fictional Narratives to Improve Social and Moral Cognition: The Influence of Narrative Perspective, Transportation, and Identification

Different routes to liking: how readers arrive at narrative evaluations

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