Marisa Bortolussi- PhD
- Professor Emerita at University of Alberta
Marisa Bortolussi
- PhD
- Professor Emerita at University of Alberta
About
30
Publications
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Introduction
I have been retired since 2020. My career began as a professor of French Canadian literature, Hispanic literature, and literary theory, then expanded to include World literature. Upon meeting my soon-to-be collaborator and husband, a cognitive psychologist, I undertook a long, (continuing) retraining in that field.
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Publications
Publications (30)
Perspective taking is a critical component of approaches to literature and narrative, but there is no coherent, broadly applicable, and process-based account of what it is and how it occurs. This book provides a multidisciplinary coverage of the topic, weaving together key insights from different disciplines into a comprehensive theory of perspecti...
In this study, we used latent variable analysis to distinguish two components of reader reactions to narrative fiction: Evaluative reaction is the extent to which a character is seen as reasonable and rational, and experiential reaction is the extent to which the reader feels similar to and identifies with the character. We found that evaluative re...
We argue that to understand how readers process narrative, it is necessary to distinguish between psychological stance (i.e., how the narrator evaluates events and characters) and physical perspective (i.e., the angle of view from which events are described). Although these are metaphorically related, the cognitive processes that produce such a con...
We present a new framework for the discussion of perspective taking, particularly with reference to the processing of literary narrative. In this framework, adopting a perspective entails matching evaluations with those of the narrative character. This approach predicts that perspectives should be piecemeal rather than holistic, dynamic rather than...
Narrative Absorption brings together research from the social sciences and Humanities to solve a number of mysteries: Most of us will have had those moments, of being totally absorbed in a book, a movie, or computer game. Typically we do not have any idea about how we ended up in such a state. Nor do we fully realize how we might have changed as we...
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 co...
In this experiment, we investigated whether book covers can signal sub-genre information to knowledgeable readers. Self-identified science-fiction fans and mystery fans sorted 80 randomly selected book covers from each of those genres into groups of their own devising. The sorts were used to identify similarity among books, and that similarity stru...
In the present research, we attempted to manipulate non-contingent processing in reading - that is, mental activities that are not dependent on processing the words of the text. An important class of non-contingent processing is mind wandering, but non-contingent processing may include other, task-related activities as well. In our study, participa...
An experiment was run to determine the effect of critical reviews on readers’ evaluation of literary works. We hypothesized that there are two mechanisms by which extratextual information can have an effect on evaluation: orienting, in which processing is directed to different aspects of the text by the extratextual information, and adjustment, in...
An implicit supposition in literary studies is that ideal readers have unconstrained access to the text. However, we argue instead that the processing of literary narrative must be mediated by the fragmentary and distorted memory of real readers. In the present chapter, we focus on an important determinant of memory: the variation in readers’ menta...
In two experiments, we investigated how text recall was related to moment-to-moment variations in mental state while reading, and how both recall and mental state were related to the interest value of the text. In both experiments, subjects read either an interesting text (a segment of Rice's Interview with the Vampire [A. Rice, 1997, Interview wit...
Memory is arguable the most important cognitive operation involved in literary processing. This paper is an initial foray into the topic of memory for literary text. It begins by examining the research on memory for discourse in the field of cognitive psychology, and then proceeds to identify issues specifically related to memory for literary texts...
Three experiments were conducted on how properties of the text control one aspect of the process of identifying with the central character in a story. In particular, we were concerned with textual determinants of character transparency, that is, the extent to which the character’s actions and attitudes are clear and understandable. In Experiment 1,...
In the present editorial, we briefly describe some aspects of the domain of the scientific study of literature, the methods that have been used, and the nature of the theories that have been developed. We discuss some of the prior work that has been done on cognitive processing of and affective reactions to literary texts and how this interacts wit...
In the present research, we examined the effect of protagonist gender on reader evaluations of excerpts from novels. Extant analyses of the role of gender in reading suggest that there should be a gender-match effect in which, for example, women prefer stories with female protagonists. To test this prediction, we created different versions of the e...
This research examined readers' knowledge of popular genres. Participants wrote short essays on fantasy, science fiction, or romance. The similarities among the essays were measured using latent semantic analysis (LSA) and were then analyzed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. The clusters and scales were interpreted by searching f...
Psychonarratology is an approach to the empirical study of literary response and the processing of narrative. It draws on the empirical methodology of cognitive psychology and discourse processing as well as the theoretical insights and conceptual analysis of literary studies, particularly narratology. The present work provides a conceptual and emp...
Directions in Empirical Literary Studies is on the cutting edge of empirical studies and is a much needed volume. It both widens the scope of empirical studies and looks at them from an intercultural perspective by bringing together renowned scholars from the fields of philosophy, sociology, psychology, linguistics and literature, all focusing on h...
Directions in Empirical Literary Studies is on the cutting edge of empirical studies and is a much needed volume. It both widens the scope of empirical studies and looks at them from an intercultural perspective by bringing together renowned scholars from the fields of philosophy, sociology, psychology, linguistics and literature, all focusing on h...
In the present article, we propose a framework for understanding a variety of genre-reception phenomena that we term a “search-for-features” model. The essence of this approach is that many characteristics of genre and genre structure are determined by readers' expectations concerning whether they will enjoy a work. The model provides a framework f...
We welcome this opportunity to reply to Nilli Diengott’s review of our book, Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. While she has identified a number of regrettable misstatements in the book and has raised a number of interesting arguments concerning our hypotheses about readers’ representations, it also appear...
Psychonarratology is an approach to the empirical study of literary response and the processing of narrative. It draws on the empirical methodology of cognitive psychology and discourse processing as well as the theoretical insights and conceptual analysis of literary studies, particularly narratology. The present work provides a conceptual and emp...
In much of the theoretical analyses of text processing, it is assumed that text should be thought of as a form of communication between the author and the reader. This conception is analogous to the communicative model used for analyzing conversation. We argue that this text-as-communication model is inappropriate for many forms of written discours...
We propose that readers process text as if they were communicating with the narrator. This entails, first of all, that readers construct a mental representation of the narrator's knowledge, perspective, and goals, and second, that they cooperate with the narrator by interpreting the characters and events of the described world in a way that makes t...
In the present study, we sought to provide rigorous experimental evidence on the relationship between literary training and literary expertise. The methodologies employed in previous studies leave open the possibility that observed differences between experts and non experts are due to variables other than training which are correlated with experti...
The present article provides a framework for evaluating literary interpretation and critical analysis. The framework provides a method of approaching the “text” that involves distinguishing text features from text effects. In addition, a definition of the “reader” is described in terms of populations of readers. Within this framework, one criterion...
