Measuring literary experience
Comment on Jacobs (2016)
Peter Dixon | University of Alberta, Canada
Jacobs (2016) raises a number of insightful and provocative points about the study of literary experience, including the importance of development, the promise of process models, and the role of quantitative methods. In the present comment, we first elaborate on one aspect of the literary experience that seems to be neglected by his introductory comments, namely, that that experience is not limited to the act of reading but can easily extend to long after the reading is completed. Based on this insight, we then offer an analysis of the types of measurements that might be used in the empirical study of literary processing. While this analysis is not necessarily incompatible with Jacob’s discussion, we believe that it offers several new insights that are not readily apparent.
Published online: 28 July 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.5.2.03dix
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.5.2.03dix
References
References
Dixon, P., & Bortolussi, M.
(2012) The puzzle of memory for literary text. Fictions, 11, 25–40.
Green, M.C., & Brock, T.C.
(2000) The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. 
Jacobs, A.
(2016) The scientific study of literary experience: Sampling the state of the art. Scientific Study of Literature, 5(2).
Kuiken, D., Phillips, L., Gregus, M., Miall, D.S., Verbitsky, M., & Tonkonogy, A.
(2004) Locating self-modifying feelings within literary reading. Discourse Processes, 38(2), 267–286.
Postman, L., & Senders, V.L.
(1946) Incidental learning and generality of set. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 36, 153–165.
Reichle, E.D., Pollatsek, A., Fisher, D.L., & Rayner, K.
(1998) Toward a model of eye movement control in reading. Psychological Review, 105(1), 125–157.
Silverberg, L.I.
(2003) Bibliotherapy: The therapeutic use of didactic and literary texts in treatment, diagnosis, prevention, and training. The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, 103(3), 131–135.
Verleger, R.
(1988) Event-related potentials and cognition: A critique of the context updating hypothesis and an alternative interpretation of P3. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(3), 343–356.
Wheeler, S.P.
(2007) So who is the little lady who started this great war. [Web page] Retrieved from: http://www.lincolnstudies.com/?p=338.
Cited by
Cited by 12 other publications
Hugentobler, Katharina Gloria & Jana Lüdtke
2021. Micropoetry Meets Neurocognitive Poetics: Influence of Associations on the Reception of Poetry.
Frontiers in Psychology 12
Jacobs, Arthur M.
2016. The scientific study of literary experience and neuro-behavioral responses to literature.
Scientific Study of Literature 6:1 ► pp. 164 ff.
Jacobs, Arthur M., Berenike Herrmann, Gerhard Lauer, Jana Lüdtke & Sascha Schroeder
2020. Sentiment Analysis of Children and Youth Literature: Is There a Pollyanna Effect?.
Frontiers in Psychology 11
Jacobs, Arthur M. & Annette Kinder
2017. “The Brain Is the Prisoner of Thought”: A Machine-Learning Assisted Quantitative Narrative Analysis of Literary Metaphors for Use in Neurocognitive Poetics.
Metaphor and Symbol 32:3 ► pp. 139 ff.
Jacobs, Arthur M., Jana Lüdtke, Arash Aryani, Burkhard Meyer-Sickendieck & Markus Conrad
2016. Mood-empathic and aesthetic responses in poetry reception.
Scientific Study of Literature 6:1 ► pp. 87 ff.
Jacobs, Arthur M., Sarah Schuster, Shuwei Xue & Jana Lüdtke
2017. What’s in the brain that ink may character …..
Scientific Study of Literature 7:1 ► pp. 4 ff.
Jacobs, Arthur M. & Roel M. Willems
2018. The Fictive Brain: Neurocognitive Correlates of Engagement in Literature.
Review of General Psychology 22:2 ► pp. 147 ff.
Kuijpers, Moniek M.
2021.
In Style and Reader Response [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 36],
► pp. 217 ff.
Mangen, Anne, Anne Charlotte Begnum, Anežka Kuzmičová, Kersti Nilsson, Mette Steenberg & Hildegunn Støle
2018. Empathy and literary style.
Orbis Litterarum 73:6 ► pp. 471 ff.
Nenadić, Filip, Dušan Vejnović & Slobodan Marković
2019. Subjective experience of poetry: Latent structure and differences between experts and non-experts.
Poetics 73 ► pp. 100 ff.
van Krieken, Kobie, Hans Hoeken & José Sanders
2017. Evoking and Measuring Identification with Narrative Characters – A Linguistic Cues Framework.
Frontiers in Psychology 8
Xue, Shuwei, Arthur M. Jacobs & Jana Lüdtke
2020. What Is the Difference? Rereading Shakespeare’s Sonnets —An Eye Tracking Study.
Frontiers in Psychology 11
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 09 november 2021. 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.