Cover not available
Article published In:
Scientific Study of Literature
Vol. 6:2 (2016) ► pp.278–297

Validating judgments of perspective embedding

Further explorations of a new tool for literary analysis

| City University of New York, USA | Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT USA | Yale University, USA
| University of Kentucky, USA
| Johns Hopkins University, USA
| Universität Passau, Germany
| Queens College, USA
| Vanderbilt University, USA
| University of Pennsylvania, USA
| Yale University, USA | Deceased

Previous work (Whalen, Zunshine, & Holquist, 2012) has shown that perspective embedding ("she thought I left" embedding her perspective on "I left") affects reading times for short vignettes. With increasing levels of embedment 1–5, reading times rose almost linearly. Level 0 was as slow as 3–4. Embedment level was determined by the authors, but validation by others is desirable. In Experiment 1, we trained 12 literature students to make embedment judgments. Their judgments correlated highly with ours (.94 on average) and agreed exactly in the majority of cases (74.5%); almost all were within one (94.2%). In Experiment 2, judgments of the first three paragraphs of "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Lee, 1960) yielded a lower level of agreement; literature uses subtle means for introducing perspective embedment, and individuals differ about including them. Assessment of perspective embedding, and exploration of sources of disagreements, provide new tools for analyzing literature.

Keywords: reading, fiction, embedment, perspective, Theory of Mind, nested mental states
Article outline
  • Experiment 1
    • Method
      • Participants
      • Stimuli
      • Procedure
    • Results
    • Discussion
  • Experiment 2
    • Method
      • Participants
      • Stimuli
      • Procedure
    • Results
    • Discussion
  • General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 30 March 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.6.2.05wha
References
Bakhtin, M. M.
(1981) The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans. M. Holquist Ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bowes, A., & Katz, A.
(2015) Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind. Memory and Cognition, 431, 953–963. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brooks, P.
(1992) Reading for the plot: Design and intention in narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, J.
(1960) A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychosocial Measurement, 201, 37–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R. I.
(1996) Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fleiss, J. L., & Chilton, N. W.
(1983) The measurement of interexaminer agreement on periodontal disease. Journal of Periodontal Research, 181, 601–606. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hakemulder, F., & Van Peer, W.
(2015) Empirical stylistics The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Hirschfeld, L. A.
(2013) The myth of mentalizing and the primacy of folk sociology. In M. Banaji & S. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 101–106). New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hogan, P. C.
(2003) The mind and its stories: Narrative universals and human emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A., & Woolley, J. D.
(1982) Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1111, 228–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E.
(2013) Reading literary fiction improves Theory of Mind. Science, 3421, 377–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G.
(1977) The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33(1), 159–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, H.
(1960) To kill a mockingbird. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co.Google Scholar
Miall, D. S.
(2006) Literary reading: Empirical and theoretical studies. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.Google Scholar
Miall, D. S., & Kuiken, D.
(2001) Shifting perspectives: Readers’ feelings and literary response. In W. van Peer & S. Chatman (Eds.), New perspectives on narrative perspective (pp. 289–301). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Oatley, K.
(2012) The passionate muse: Exploring emotion in stories. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Palmer, A.
(2010) Social minds in the novel. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, P. J.
(1987) Before reading: Narrative conventions and the politics of interpretation. The theory and interpretation of narrative series. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, P. J., & Bancroft, C.
(2014) Euclid at the core: Recentering literary education. Style, 48(1), 1–34.Google Scholar
Schneider, R.
(2001) Toward a cognitive theory of literary character: The dynamics of mental-model construction. Style, 351, 607–639.Google Scholar
(2013) The cognitive theory of character reception: An updated proposal. Anglistik, 24(2), 117–134.Google Scholar
Scholes, R., Phelan, J., & Kellogg, R.
(2006) The nature of narrative (Revised and expanded, 40th anniversary edition ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D.
(2002) Pragmatics, modularity and mindreading. Mind and Language, 171, 3–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Duijn, M. J., Sluiter, I., & Verhagen, A.
(2015) When narrative takes over: The representation of embedded mindstates in Shakespeare’s Othello. Language and Literature, 24(2), 148–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Peer, W., Hakemulder, F., & Zyngier, S.
(2007) Lines on feeling: foregrounding, aesthetics and meaning. Language and Literature, 16(2), 197–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whalen, D. H., Zunshine, L., & Holquist, M.
(2012) Theory of Mind and embedding of perspective: A psychological test of a literary “sweet spot”. Scientific Study of Literature, 2(2), 301–315. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Perspective embedding affects reading time: Implications for the reading of literature. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(1778), 1–9.Google Scholar
Zunshine, L.
(2006) Why we read fiction: Theory of mind and the novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
(2011) Style brings in mental states. Style, 451, 349–356.Google Scholar
(2014) Theory of Mind as a pedagogical tool. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 161, 89–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015a) From the social to the literary: Approaching Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone (紅樓夢) from a cognitive perspective. In L. Zunshine (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive literary studies (pp. 176–196). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2015b) The secret life of fiction. PMLA, 1301, 724–731. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Carpenter, Jordan M., Melanie C. Green & Kaitlin Fitzgerald
2018. Mind-reading motivation. Scientific Study of Literature 8:2 ► pp. 211 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 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.