Article published In:
Scientific Study of LiteratureVol. 5:1 (2015) ► pp.99–128
Reading beyond the lines
A critical review of cognitive approaches to literary interpretation and comprehension
Reading literature requires not only understanding the literal meaning of the text, but also constructing a nonliteral interpretation of the text’s deeper meaning yet little is known about the psychological processes involved when interpretations are constructed. The current paper presents a review of the extant work from literary theory, empirical studies of literature, and research from more general cognitive text comprehension to explore the conditions under which literary interpretations are made and what this discipline-specific reading behavior can tell us about more general text comprehension.
References (80)
Abrahamsen, E.P., & Sprouse, P.T. (1995). Fable comprehension by children with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 281, 302–308. 
Anderson, R.C., & Pichert, J.W. (1978). Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift in perspective. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 171, 1–12.
Bortolussi, M., & Dixon, P. (1996). The effects of formal literary training on literary reception. Poetics, 231, 471–487.
. (2013). Minding the text: Memory for literary narrative. In L. Bernaerts, L. Herman, B. Vervaeck, & D. de Geest (Eds.), Stories and minds: Cognitive approaches to literary narrative (pp. 23–37). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Bråten, I., & Strømsø, H.I. (2006). Constructing meaning from multiple information sources as a function of personal epistemology. Information Design Journal, 141, 56–67.
Chase, W.G., & Simon, H.A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 55–81.
Chi, M.T.H., Feltovich, P.J., & Glaser, R. (1981). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 51, 121–152.
Claassen, E. (2012). Author representation in literary reading. Utrecht, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Comer Kidd, D., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 3421, 377–380.
Culler, J. (1994). Structuralism in literature. In D. Keesey (Ed.), Contexts for criticism (pp. 280–289). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Dixon, P., & Bortolussi, M. (2011). The scientific study of literature: What can, has, and should be done. Scientific Study of Literature, 11, 59–71.
Dixon, P., Bortolussi, M., Twilley, L.C., & Leung, A. (1993). Literary processing and interpretation: Towards empirical foundations. Poetics, 221, 5–33.
Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities. London, United Kingdom: Harvard University Press.
Djikic, M., Oatley, K., & Moldoveanu, M.C. (2013). Opening the closed mind: The effect of exposure to literature on the need for closure. Creativity Research Journal, 251, 149–154.
Dorfman, M.H., & Brewer, W.F. (1994). Understanding the points of fables. Discourse Processes, 171, 105–129.
Elfenbein, A. (2006). Cognitive science and the history of reading. PMLA, 1211, 484–502.
Gibbs, R. (2001). Authorial intentions in text understanding. Discourse Processes, 321, 73–80.
Goldman, S.R. (2004). Cognitive aspects of constructing meaning through and across multiple texts. In N. Shuart-Faris & D. Bloome (Eds.), Uses of intertextuality in classroom and educational research (pp. 317–351). Greenwich, CN: Information Age.
. (2012). Adolescent literacy: Learning and understanding content. The Future of Children, 221, 89–116.
Goldman, S.R., & Bisanz, G. (2002). Toward a functional analysis of scientific genres: Implications for understanding and learning processes. In J. Otero, J.A. Leon, & A.C. Graesser (Eds.), The psychology of science text comprehension. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Goldman, S.R., McCarthy, K.S., & Burkett, C. (2015). Interpretive inferences in literature. In E. O’Brien, A. Cook, & R. Lorch (Eds.), Inferences during reading. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Graesser, A.C., & McNamara, D.S. (2011). Computational analyses of discourse comprehension. Topics in Cognitive Science, 31, 371–398.
Graesser, A.C., Millis, K.K., & Zwaan, R.A. (1997). Discourse comprehension. In J.T. Spence, J.M. Darley, & D.J. Foss (Eds.), Annual review of psychology. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.
Graesser, A.C., Lu, S., Olde, B., Cooper-Pye, E., & Whitten, S.N. (2005). Question asking and eye tracking during cognitive disequilibrium: Comprehending illustrated texts when the devices breakdown. Memory and Cognition, 331, 1235–1247.
Graesser, A.C., Pomeroy, V.J., & Craig, S.D. (2002). Psychological and computational research on theme comprehension. In M. Louwerse & W. Van Peer (Eds.), Thematics: Interdisciplinary studies (pp. 19–34). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Graesser, A.C., Singer, M., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension. Psychological Review, 1011, 371–395.
Graves, B., & Frederiksen, C.H. (1991). Literary expertise in the description of fictional narrative. Poetics, 201, 1–26.
Hanauer, D. (1998). The genre-specific hypothesis of reading: Reading poetry and encyclopedic items. Poetics, 261, 63–80.
Harker, W.J. (1996). Toward a defensible psychology of literary interpretation. In R.J. Kreuz & S.M. MacNealy (Eds.), Empirical approaches to literature and aesthetics (pp. 645–658). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Hillocks, G., & Ludlow, L.H. (1984). A taxonomy of skills in reading and interpreting fiction. American Educational Research Journal, 211, 7–24.
Hoffstaedter, P. (1987). Poetic text processing and its empirical investigation. Poetics, 161, 75–91.
Johnson, D.F., & Goldman, S.R. (1987). Children’s recognition and use of rules of moral conduct in stories. The American Journal of Psychology, 1001, 205–224.
Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kendeou, P., Bohn-Gettler, C.M., & Fulton, S. (2011). What we have been missing: The role of goals in reading comprehension. In M.T. McCrudden, J.P. Magliano, & G. Schraw (Eds.), Text relevance and learning from text. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Kinstch, W., Welsch, D., Schmalhofer, F., & Zimny, S. (1990). Sentence memory: A theoretical analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 291, 133–159.
Kotovsky, K., Hayes, J.R., & Simon, H.A. (1985). Why are some problems hard? Evidence from Tower of Hanoi. Cognitive Psychology, 171, 248–294.
Kreuz, R.J., & Roberts, R.M. (1993). The empirical study of figurative language in literature. Poetics, 221, 151–169.
Kurtz, V., & Schober, M.F. (2001). Readers’ varying interpretations of theme in short fiction. Poetics, 291, 139–166.
Langer, J.A. (2010). Envisioning literature: Literary understanding and literature instruction, (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Lee, C.D. (2007). Culture, literacy, and learning: taking bloom in the midst of the whirlwind. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
. (2011). Education and the study of literature. Scientific Study of Literature, 11, 49–58.
Levine, S., & Horton, W.S. (2013). Using affective appraisal to help readers construct literary interpretations. Scientific Study of Literature, 31, 105–136.
Louwerse, M.M., Benesh, N., & Zhang, B. (2008). Computationally discriminating literary from non-literary texts. In S. Zyngier, M. Bortolussi, A. Chesnokova, & J. Auracher (Eds.), Directions in empirical literary studies (pp. 175–192). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Magliano, J.P., Baggett, W.B., & Graesser, A.C. (1996). A taxonomy of inference categories that may be generated during the comprehension of literary texts. In R.J. Kreuz & S.M. MacNealy (Eds.), Empirical approaches to literature and aesthetics (pp. 201–220). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Magliano, J.P., & Graesser, A.C. (1991). A three-pronged method for studying inference generation in literary text. Poetics, 201, 193–232.
Mason, L., Scirica, F., & Salvi, L. (2006). Effects of beliefs about meaning construction and task instructions on interpretation of narrative texts. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 311, 411–437.
McCarthy, K.S., & Goldman, S.R. (2015). Comprehension of short stories: Effects of task instructions on literary interpretation. Discourse Processes, 521, 585–608.
McCarthy, P.M., Myers, J.C., Briner, S.W., Graesser, A.C., & McNamara, D.S. (2009). A psychological and computational study of sub-sentential genre recognition. Journal for Language Technology and Computational Linguistics, 241, 23–55.
McCrudden, M.T., Magliano, J.P., & Schraw, G. (2010). Exploring how relevance instructions affect personal reading intentions, reading goals and text processing: A mixed methods study. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 351, 229–241.
McCrudden, M.T., & Schraw, G. (2007). Relevance and goal-focusing in text processing. Educational Psychology Review, 191, 113–139.
McNamara, D.S., & Magliano, J.P. (2009). Toward a comprehensive model of comprehension. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 511, 297–384.
Means, M.L., & Voss, J.F. (1985). Star Wars: A developmental study of expert and novice knowledge structures. Journal of Memory and Language, 241, 746–757.
Miall, D.S., & Kuiken, D. (1994a). Beyond text theory: Understanding literary response. Discourse Processes, 171, 337–352.
. (1994b). Foregrounding, defamiliarization, and affect response to literary stories. Poetics, 221, 389–407.
. (1998). The form of reading: Empirical studies of literariness. Poetics, 251, 327–341.
Narvaez, D., Bentley, J., Gleason, T., & Samuels, J. (1998). Moral theme comprehension in third graders, fifth graders, and college students. Reading Psychology, 191, 217–241.
Peskin, J. (1998). Constructing meaning when reading poetry: An expert-novice study. Cognition and Instruction, 161, 135–263.
. (2007). The genre of poetry: Secondary school students’ conventional expectations and interpretative operations. English in Education, 411, 20–36.
Pfaff, K.L., & Gibbs, R.W. (1997). Authorial intentions in understanding satirical texts. Poetics, 251, 45–70.
Rabinowitz, P. (1987). Before reading: Narrative conventions and the politics of interpretation. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Rapp, D.N., Komeda, H., & Hinze, S.R. (2011). Vivifications of literary investigation. Scientific Study of Literature, 11, 123–135.
Schommer, M. (1990). Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 821, 498–504.
Schraw, G. (1997). Situational interest in literary text. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 221, 436–456.
. (2000). Reader beliefs and meaning construction in narrative text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 921, 96–106.
Schraw, G., & Bruning, R. (1996). Readers’ implicit models of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 311, 290–305.
Snow, C., & Biancarosa, G. (2003). Adolescent literacy and the achievement gap: What do we know and where do we go from here? New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Stathopoulou, C., & Vosniadou, S. (2007). Exploring the relationship between physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics understanding. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 321, 255–281.
Tobias, S. (1994). Interest, prior knowledge, and learning. Review of Educational Research, 641, 37–54.
van den Broek, P., Lorch, R.F., Linderholm, T., & Gustafson, M. (2001). The effects of readers’ goals on inference generation and memory for texts. Memory and Cognition, 291, 1081–1087.
van den Broek, P., Young, M., Tzeng, Y., & Linderholm, T. (1999). The landscape model of reading: Inferences and the on-line construction of a memory representation. In H. van Oostendorp & S.R. Goldman (Eds.), The construction of mental representations during reading (pp. 71–98). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Van Dijk, T.A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Vipond, D., & Hunt, R.A. (1984). Point-driven understanding: Pragmatic and cognitive dimensions of literary reading. Poetics, 131, 261–277.
Warren, J.E. (2011). “Generic” and “specific” expertise in English: An expert/novice study in poetry interpretation and academic argument. Cognition and Instruction, 291, 349–374.
Wiley, J., & Voss, J.F. (1999). Constructing arguments from multiple sources: Tasks that promote understanding and not just memory for text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 911, 301–311.
Zeitz, C.M. (1994). Expert-novice differences in memory, abstraction, and reasoning in the domain of literature. Cognition and Instruction, 41, 277–312.
Zhang, H., & Hoosain, R. (2005). Activation of themes during narrative reading. Discourse Processes, 401, 57–82.
Zwaan, R.A. (1993). Aspects of literary comprehension: A cognitive approach. Utrecht, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
. (1994). Effect of genre expectation on text comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 201, 920–933.
Zwaan, R.A., & Radvansky, G.A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 1231, 162–185.
Cited by (17)
Cited by 17 other publications
List, Alexandra & Honcui Du
2024. Attendance to notable terms promotes narrative frame analysis when students read multiple expository texts. Contemporary Educational Psychology 79 ► pp. 102302 ff. 
Fabregat-Barrios, Santiago, Xavier Fontich & Carmen González-González-de-Mesa
2023. The eclectic landscape: examining Spanish secondary school teachers’ beliefs on literary education. Frontiers in Education 8
Gracia Gaspar, María Luz
2023. El giro cognitivo en los estudios literarios y artísticos. Escritura e Imagen 19 ► pp. 25 ff.
Gauche, Gilberto & Eileen Pfeiffer Flores
2022. The role of inferences in reading comprehension: A critical analysis. Theory & Psychology 32:2 ► pp. 326 ff.
List, Alexandra, Hongcui Du & Bailing Lyu
2022. Examining undergraduates’ text-based evidence identification, evaluation, and use. Reading and Writing 35:5 ► pp. 1059 ff.
Nishihara, Takayuki
2022. EFL learners’ reading traits for lexically easy short poetry. Cogent Education 9:1
Gambino, Renata & Grazia Pulvirenti
2021. Reading »Against the Grain«: For a Neurohermeneutics of Suspicion. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 51:4 ► pp. 665 ff.
Werner, Christiana & Jana Lüdtke
2021. Empathy’s Role in Different Levels of Understanding Literature: Empirical and Philosophical Perspectives. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79:2 ► pp. 239 ff.
Zheng, Yi
2021. Hermeneutics, Practical Wisdom, and Cognitive Poetics. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 51:4 ► pp. 833 ff.
Flores, Eileen Pfeiffer, Bianca da Nóbrega Rogoski & Anny Caroline Gomes Nolasco
2020. Comprensión Narrativa: Análisis del Concepto y una Propuesta Metodológica. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa 36
McCarthy, Kathryn S. & Susan R. Goldman
2019. Constructing interpretive inferences about literary text: The role of domain-specific knowledge. Learning and Instruction 60 ► pp. 245 ff.
McIlroy, Tara
2019. EFL Learners Reading and Discussing Poems in English. In Literature, Spoken Language and Speaking Skills in Second Language Learning, ► pp. 151 ff.
Parente, Fabio, Kathy Conklin, Josephine Guy, Gareth Carrol & Rebekah Scott
2019. Reader expertise and the literary significance of small-scale textual
features in prose fiction. Scientific Study of Literature 9:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Bruhn, Mark J.
Guy, Josephine M, Kathy Conklin & Jennifer Sanchez-Davies
2018. Literary stylistics, authorial intention and the scientific study of literature: A critical overview. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 27:3 ► pp. 196 ff.
Koek, Martijn, Tanja Janssen, Frank Hakemulder & Gert Rijlaarsdam
Montoro, Rocío
2016. The year’s work in stylistics 2015. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 25:4 ► pp. 376 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.