No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Literary reading on paper and screen: An experiment comparing narrative immersion on paper and iPad
Abstract
As literary reading is increasingly being performed on digital devices (Kindle; Kobo; iPad), the transition from paper- to screen-based reading merits closer theoretical and empirical scrutiny. The audiovisual and ergonomic affordances of a digital device are different from those provided by the physical substrate of paper. Our manual handling of the devices while reading (e.g., page-turning, flipping/browsing, lightweight navigation, positioning of the text) is a case in point. This presentation present findings from an empirical study comparing narrative reading on paper and iPad, focusing on subjects' reported sense of immersion and transportation into the narrative.
... No obstante, en el caso de la música el cambio hacia el entorno digital ha sido distinto, por ejemplo, la edición electrónica ha pasado por un proceso considerablemente más lento. Mientras que la música pasó por un proceso de transferencia de lo físico a lo digital extremamente rápido y sin grandes indicios de rechazo, o sea, de ser un objeto también físico, como eran los vinilos o CDs, a ser distribuidos solamente en archivos en formato mp3, mp4, etc. La edición electrónica pasó por un proceso envuelto por muchas expectativas, positivas y negativas (Loebbecke, 2010;Mangen, 2012). ...
La ciudadanía contemporánea se levanta sobre un espacio configurado en el cruce de profundas transformaciones sociales y culturales que han tenido su correlato en los discursos, las simbolizaciones y las prácticas letradas en la escuela y en otros contextos actuales de aprendizaje como la Red.Los capítulos que forman parte de este libro son una selección de algunas de las contribuciones destacadas realizadas al Congreso Internacional e Interdisciplinar Miradas Letradas en Contextos Educativos. Literacidades, educación y Ciudadanía, celebrado en Cádiz (España), los días 15 y 16 de Diciembre de 2016. El propósito de este evento fue el de constituirse en un espacio de encuentro para el análisis, la reflexión y el diálogo sobre algunas cuestiones dilemáticas que conciernen a la escuela y a otros entornos contemporáneos de aprendizajes como es el caso de la Red y que constituyen el espacio sobre el que se construye la ciudadanía: las prácticas y los espacios letrados contemporáneos de la infancia, la adolescencia y la juventud; la literatura intercultural y la ciudadanía democrática; la diversidad sociocultural y las representaciones en el mundo letrado; la cibercultura, las literacidades y el aprendizaje rizomático; la alfabetización informacional y la competencia digital en las organizaciones educativas y, por último, las investigaciones en Educación, literacidades y ciudadanía 9
el campo de las nuevas literacidades desde los Estudios Culturales, los Nuevos Estudios de Literacidad y la Pedagogía Crítica.(Prólogo)
... En 2012 se publicaron los resultados de un estudio realizado por investigadores de la Universidad de Stavanger (Noruega), cuyo objetivo era precisamente el de evaluar el comportamiento de los lectores de este grupo de edad, haciendo una comparación entre el rendimiento de la lectura de textos en formato digital y la lectura de textos impresos, con el fin de evaluar cómo el formato del libro puede influir en la comprensión de la lectura (Mangen 2012). Participaron en el experimento 72 adolescentes, con edades entre 15 y 16 años, todos matriculados en escuelas secundarias de Noruega. ...
La Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez realizó entre los años 2009 y 2014 una importante experiencia de investigación en el ámbito de la lectura digital: el programa Territorio Ebook. En ella estuvieron involucrados cerca de 300 lectores entre 9 y 75 años, además de bibliotecarios, autores e investigadores de la Universidad de Salamanca, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca y Universidad de Granada. Entre los objetivos de este programa estuvo el de elaborar una etnografía del lector digital de las bibliotecas públicas de España, pero su alcance fue mayor ya que al contrastar estas investigaciones con otras hechas en diferentes países, es posible extrapolar sus resultados más allá de sus fronteras. En este artículo destaca uno de los diversos matices del programa Territorio Ebook, la investigación distribuida por grupos de edad. Se propone un estudio comparativo entre los resultados alcanzados por la Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez según cada grupo de edad e investigaciones realizadas en otros lugares con esta misma variante. Como conclusión destaca la eficacia de investigar en profundidad todos los grupos de lectores, teniendo en cuenta que cada uno tiene características específicas que conducen a diferentes resultados.
... This item is part of the Narrative Engagement Scale, developed by Busselle and Bilandzic with feature film and television viewers but readily adopted in research on reading (e.g. Mangen, 2012). Narrative engagement is a construct comprising the four dimensions of narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence. ...
While language use in general is currently being explored as essentially situated in immediate physical environment, narrative reading is primarily regarded as a means of decoupling one's consciousness from the environment. In order to offer a more diversified view of narrative reading, the article distinguishes between 3 different roles the environment can play in the reading experience. Next to the traditional notion that environmental stimuli disrupt attention, the article proposes that they can also serve as a prop for mental imagery and/or a locus of pleasure more generally. The latter 2 perspectives presuppose a more clear-cut distinction between consciousness and attention than typically assumed in the communication literature. The article concludes with a list of implications for research and practice.
The phenomenology of reader absorption was investigated using quantitative and qualitative measures. The 12 male and 12 female participants ranged in age between 19 and 53. There were two parts to the study that were counterbalanced across participants. In one part, they read two excerpted literary passages contrasting emotional and descriptive styles of writing and rated them on an 11-item questionnaire. In another part, they were interviewed regarding the general experience of being absorbed in a book and about a specific absorbing text of their choice. Phenomenological analysis of interview data revealed experiential properties (corporeality, sensory perceptions, spatiality, temporality, and agency) and underlying processes (e.g., reader's perspective, attention, familiarity with situation) that shaped the reading activity. Factor analyses of the verbal rating scales and of the frequency tables for properties and processes both contrasted empathetic and sympathetic reading modes. These were also revealed in close (i.e., spontaneous and experiential) and far (i.e., purposeful and inferential) reader orientations which appear to have reflected individual differences in reading styles. The pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.
Electronic books (e-book) are an interesting option compared to classic paper books. Most e-reading devices of the first generation were based on e-ink technology. With the appearance of the Apple iPad on the market, TFT-LCDs became important in the field of e-reading. Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages but the question remains whether one or the other technology is better for reading. In the present study we analyzed and compared reading behavior when reading on e-inkreader (e-ink displays) and on tablets (TFT-LCDs) as measured by eye-tracking. The results suggest that the reading behavior on tablets is indeed very similar to the reading behavior on e-ink-reader. Participants showed no difference in fixation duration. Significant differences in reading speed and in the proportion of regressive saccades suggest that tablets, under special artificial light conditions, may even provide better legibility.
The Experiencing Questionnaire (EQ) is a 58-item instrument recently developed to assess some relatively uncommon but theoretically significant types of reading experience. Derived from the phenomenological conception of “experiencing,” it promises psychometrically sound access to the generative and self-altering aspects of literary reading. Results of preliminary studies indicate that EQ scales are reliable, that profiles of EQ scales differentiate theoretically relevant orientations toward literary reading (e.g., objective engagement, subjective engagement, secular enactive engagement, spiritual enactive engagement), and that the interactive combination of selected EQ scales reflects apex moments (sublime disquietude, sublime enthrallment) during literary reading.
The recent rise of electronic media, and the move away from traditional reading and reading, are leading to a fundamental shift in the way in which the human brain processes information. This shift in patterns of human cognition has separate impli-cations for new readers, individuals with reading disabilities, and children without ac-cess to schools. While this evolving method of reading may threaten the development of deep reading skills in new readers, it also promises to provide unprecedented ac-cess to information and instruction for children without access to formal schooling. N early two-and-a-half millennia ago, philosophers of ancient Athens struggled with the cognitive implications of a cultural and technical innovation that they believed would change all human communication and potentially transform the development and use of all knowledge—reading. The move from an oral tradition to the written word would, they be-lieved, reshape the human mind, with unknown sequelae. Previous generations had preserved and shared human knowledge through memory and rhetoric. Writing could render such abilities irrelevant. In Plato's (1961) Phaedrus, Socrates argued that the human capacity for memory and what he considered "access to true knowledge" would be irreversibly altered, with consequences particularly for youth. The young, he stated, would be deluded into thinking that their surface knowledge—passively received from reading permanent-looking, written words—was an end, rather than the first step in the effortful process of working toward deeper understanding. Although it is only through Plato's recorded texts that we have access to Socrates' today, Socrates' only semi-ironic condemnation of reading and writing provides an analogy for critical issues we face today as new cultural and technological innovations once again reshape human
The present research examined the role of personality factors and paratextual information about the reliability of a story on its persuasiveness. Study 1 (N = 135) was focused on recipients' explicit expectations about the trustworthiness/usefulness and the immersiveness/entertainment value of stories introduced as nonfiction, fiction, or fake. Study 2 (experimental, N = 186) demonstrated that a story was persuasive in all three paratext conditions (nonfiction, fiction, or fake versus belief‐unrelated control story) and that its influence increased with the recipients' need for affect. Participants' need for cognition increased the difference in persuasiveness of a nonfictional versus a fake story. Additional mediation analyses suggest that fiction is more persuasive than fake because readers of fiction get more deeply transported into the story world.
The mass digitization of books is changing the way information is created, disseminated and
displayed. Electronic book readers (e-readers) generally refer to two main display
technologies: the electronic ink (E-ink) and the liquid crystal display (LCD). Both
technologies have advantages and disadvantages, but the question whether one or the other
triggers less visual fatigue is still open. The aim of the present research was to study the
effects of the display technology on visual fatigue. To this end, participants performed a
longitudinal study in which two last generation e-readers (LCD, E-ink) and paper book were
tested in three different prolonged reading sessions separated by - on average - ten days.
Results from both objective (Blinks per second) and subjective (Visual Fatigue Scale)
measures suggested that reading on the LCD (Kindle Fire HD) triggers higher visual fatigue
with respect to both the E-ink (Kindle Paperwhite) and the paper book. The absence of
differences between E-ink and paper suggests that, concerning visual fatigue, the E-ink is
indeed very similar to the paper.
Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human
societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults.
We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments
1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments
2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily
enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.
The current study investigated whether fiction experiences change empathy of the reader. Based on transportation theory, it was predicted that when people read fiction, and they are emotionally transported into the story, they become more empathic. Two experiments showed that empathy was influenced over a period of one week for people who read a fictional story, but only when they were emotionally transported into the story. No transportation led to lower empathy in both studies, while study 1 showed that high transportation led to higher empathy among fiction readers. These effects were not found for people in the control condition where people read non-fiction. The study showed that fiction influences empathy of the reader, but only under the condition of low or high emotional transportation into the story.
There has been a growing understanding of how the mind and brain work in readers' and writers' engagement with fiction. This is worthwhile because fiction occupies much time in people's lives and because it enables them to understand others and themselves. At the same time, the future of research in this area will contribute to psychology generally, with insights into the model-making function of mind, relating by means of conversation, empathetic theory-of-mind, imagination, and personal transformation.
An experiment tested the hypothesis that art can cause significant changes in the experience of one's own personality traits under laboratory conditions. After completing a set of questionnaires, including the Big-Five Inventory (BFI) and an emotion checklist, the experimental group read the short story The Lady With the Toy Dog by Chekhov, while the control group read a comparison text that had the same content as the story, but was documentary in form. The comparison text was controlled for length, readability, complexity, and interest level. Participants then completed again the BFI and emotion checklist, randomly placed within a larger set of questionnaires. The results show the experimental group experienced significantly greater change in self-reported experience of personality traits than the control group, and that emotion change mediated the effect of art on traits. Further consideration should be given to the role of art in the facilitation of processes of personality growth and maturation.
In both schools and homes, information and communication technologies (ICT) are widely seen as enhancing learning, this hope fuelling their rapid diffusion and adoption throughout developed societies. But they are not yet so embedded in the social practices of everyday life as to be taken for granted, with schools proving slower to change their lesson plans than they were to fit computers in the classroom. This article examines two possible explanations – first, that convincing evidence of improved learning outcomes remains surprisingly elusive, and second, the unresolved debate over whether ICT should be conceived of as supporting delivery of a traditional or a radically different vision of pedagogy based on soft skills and new digital literacies. The difficulty in establishing traditional benefits, and the uncertainty over pursuing alternative benefits, raises fundamental questions over whether society really desires a transformed, technologically-mediated relation between teacher and learner.
Our life is full of stories: some of them depict real-life events and were reported, e.g. in the daily news or in autobiographies,
whereas other stories, as often presented to us in movies and novels, are fictional. However, we have only little insights
in the neurocognitive processes underlying the reading of factual as compared to fictional contents. We investigated the neurocognitive
effects of reading short narratives, labeled to be either factual or fictional. Reading in a factual mode engaged an activation
pattern suggesting an action-based reconstruction of the events depicted in a story. This process seems to be past-oriented
and leads to shorter reaction times at the behavioral level. In contrast, the brain activation patterns corresponding to reading
fiction seem to reflect a constructive simulation of what might have happened. This is in line with studies on imagination
of possible past or future events.
The idea of the ‘digital natives’, a generation of tech-savvy young people immersed in digital technologies for which current education systems cannot cater, has gained widespread popularity on the basis of claims rather than evidence. Recent research has shown flaws in the argument that there is an identifiable generation or even a single type of highly adept technology user. For educators, the diversity revealed by these studies provides valuable insights into students' experiences of technology inside and outside formal education. While this body of work provides a preliminary understanding, it also highlights subtleties and complexities that require further investigation. It suggests, for example, that we must go beyond simple dichotomies evident in the digital natives debate to develop a more sophisticated understanding of our students' experiences of technology. Using a review of recent research findings as a starting point, this paper identifies some key issues for educational researchers, offers new ways of conceptualizing key ideas using theoretical constructs from Castells, Bourdieu and Bernstein, and makes a case for how we need to develop the debate in order to advance our understanding.
Reading is a multi-sensory activity, entailing perceptual, cognitive and motor interactions with whatever is being read. With digital technology, reading manifests itself as being extensively multi-sensory – both in more explicit and more complex ways than ever before. In different ways from traditional reading technologies such as the codex, digital technology illustrates how the act of reading is intimately connected with and intricately dependent on the fact that we are both body and mind – a fact carrying important implications for even such an apparently intellectual activity as reading, whether recreational, educational or occupational. This article addresses some important and hitherto neglected issues concerning digital reading, with special emphasis on the vital role of our bodies, and in particular our fingers and hands, for the immersive fiction reading experience.
This article reviews research on the use of situation models in language comprehension and memory retrieval over the past 15 years. Situation models are integrated mental representations of a described state of affairs. Significant progress has been made in the scientific understanding of how situation models are involved in language comprehension and memory retrieval. Much of this research focuses on establishing the existence of situation models, often by using tasks that assess one dimension of a situation model. However, the authors argue that the time has now come for researchers to begin to take the multidimensionality of situation models seriously. The authors offer a theoretical framework and some methodological observations that may help researchers to tackle this issue.
Despite immense technological advances, learners still prefer studying text from printed hardcopy rather than from computer screens. Subjective and objective differences between on-screen and on-paper learning were examined in terms of a set of cognitive and metacognitive components, comprising a Metacognitive Learning Regulation Profile (MLRP) for each study media. Participants studied expository texts of 1000-1200 words in one of the two media and for each text they provided metacognitive prediction-of-performance judgments with respect to a subsequent multiple-choice test. Under fixed study time (Experiment 1), test performance did not differ between the two media, but when study time was self-regulated (Experiment 2) worse performance was observed on screen than on paper. The results suggest that the primary differences between the two study media are not cognitive but rather metacognitive--less accurate prediction of performance and more erratic study-time regulation on screen than on paper. More generally, this study highlights the contribution of metacognitive regulatory processes to learning and demonstrates the potential of the MLRP methodology for revealing the source of subjective and objective differences in study performance among study conditions.
Two studies using the methods of experimental psychology assessed the effects of two types of text presentation (page-by-page vs. scrolling) on participants' performance while reading and revising texts. Greater facilitative effects of the page-by-page presentation were observed in both tasks. The participants' reading task performance indicated that they built a better mental representation of the text as a whole and were better at locating relevant information and remembering the main ideas. Their revising task performance indicated a larger number of global corrections (which are the most difficult to make).
Approaches to text comprehension that focus on propositional, inferential, and elaborative processes have often been considered capable of extension in principle to literary texts, such as stories or poems. However, we argue that literary response is influenced by stylistic features that result in defamiliarization; that defamiliarization invokes feeling which calls on personal perspectives and meanings; and that these aspects of literary response are not addressed by current text theories. The main differences between text theories and defamiliarization theory are discussed. We offer a historical perspective on the theory of defamiliarization from Coleridge to the present day, and mention some empirical studies that tend to support it.
Given the fact that there are widely different types of text, it is unlikely that every text is processed in the same way. It is assumed here that for each text type, proficient readers have developed a particular cognitive control system, which regulates the basic operations of text comprehension. The book focuses on the comprehension of literary texts, which involves specific cognitive strategies that enable the reader to respond flexibly to the indeterminacies of the literary reading situation. The study relies heavily on methods and theoretical conceptions from cognitive psychology and presents the results of experiments carried out with real readers. The results are not only relevant to research problems in literary theory, but also to the study of discourse comprehension in general.
We provide a review of the literature concerning aesthetic engagement (especially with literature and film) during times of distress. The objective is to offer a conceptual framework for this fledging research area and to provide a context for several manuscripts on this topic included in a Special Issue of Scientific Study of Literature (Volume 3, Issue 2). Particular attention is given to processes that arguably are distinctively aesthetic, including (1) the role of prosodic/semantic structures in the generation of local aesthetic objects within a longer narrative; (2) the identification of an affective theme through reflective consideration of a series of separate — but resonant — local aesthetic objects; and (3) the consequent emergence of poignantly bivalent feelings tinged with loss. This framework invites reconsideration of the Aristotelian conception of catharsis (understood as clarification rather than purgation), as well as examination of how poignant aesthetic engagement invites revaluation of personal priorities during moments of vulnerability.
What does it mean to be transported by a narrative?to create a world inside one’s head? How do experiences of narrative worlds alter our experience of the real world? In this book Richard Gerrig integrates insights from cognitive psychology and from research linguistics, philosophy, and literary criticism to provide a cohesive account of what we have most often treated as isolated aspects of narrative experience.Drawing on examples from Tolstoy to Toni Morrison, Gerrig offers new analysis of some classic problems in the study of narrative. He discusses the ways in which we are cognitively equipped to tackle fictional and nonfictional narratives; how thought and emotion interact when we experience narrative; how narrative information influences judgments in the real world; and the reasons we can feel the same excitement and suspense when we reread a book as when we read it for the first time. Gerrig also explores the ways we enhance the experience of narratives, through finding solutions to textual dilemmas, enjoying irony at the expense of characters in the narrative, and applying a wide range of interpretive techniques to discover meanings concealed by and from authors.
New debates have been increasing about how technology is rewiring the infrastructure of the brain, especially among today’s teenagers who have grown up with computers. One of these debates concerns deep reading, a concept that stresses the brain’s need to concentrate undistracted on one thing at a time in order to maximally process and synthesize new material. One side argues that a computer with its dynamic interactions and multitasking demands robs teenagers of the ability to deep read and, as a consequence, disables the brain from properly developing and maturing. Another side argues that the very act of multitasking and interacting with a computer’s dynamics enables the brain to grow and mature in better ways than before. This qualitative case study closely examined the reading and study habits of four gifted readers, academically among the most successful in school, for two weeks. Findings show that each student practiced Three Common Cores of Control when they studied immediately prior to a test or project. All four students (1) needed to study in isolation in a Most Restrictive Study Environment, (2) needed absolute quiet or music to study in an Artificial Environment, and (3) needed to eliminate or sharply curtail all interaction with technology in a Retro Environment. This study found that deep reading was a part of each student’s success, and the implications are that each student must employ the Three Common Cores of Control to be the most successful. More research is needed in the area of deep reading to determine if the Three Common Cores of Control are prevalent among a greater number of gifted readers. In addition, deep reading practices or lack thereof need to be examined further with students of average ability or those with special needs.
This paper outlines the findings of a study investigating the extent and nature of use of digital technologies by undergraduate students in Social Work and Engineering, in two British universities. The study involved a questionnaire survey of students (n=160) followed by in-depth interviews with students (n=8) and lecturers and support staff (n=8) in both institutions. Firstly, the findings suggest that students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites. Secondly, the findings point to a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. Thirdly, the study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. The study shows that students ’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content. Despite both groups clearly using a rather limited range of technologies for learning, the results point to some
Purpose: Digital reading is an important research topic in contemporary information science research. This paper aims to provide a snapshot of major studies on digital reading over the past few years. Design/methodology/approach: This paper begins by introducing the background in digital reading, then outlines major research fi ndings. Findings: The paper demonstrates the growth of interest in information science and other disciplines in digital reading behavior. Five areas are highlighted: Digital reading behavior, print vs. digital, preference for reading medium, multi-tasking and learning, and technological advancement and traditional attachment. Research limitations: Only major studies in the North American and European countries are covered. Practical implications: Understanding reading behavior in the digital environment would help develop more effective reading devices and empower readers in the online environment. Originality/value: The paper represents a fi rst attempt to compare, evaluate, and synthesize recent studies on digital reading. Implications for the changes in reading behavior are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.
This article uses insights from media and communications research over recent decades to inform a critical analysis of the burgeoning multidisciplinary study of youthful digital engagement. The analysis first points to the systematic connections between mediatization and the problematic dimensions of consumerism, individualization, and globalization. Critiquing the popular rhetoric of the digital native, it then draws on empirical observation to temper excessive celebration of youthful creative and expressive skills and, thus, support rather than undermine the resourcing of digital opportunities for youth. To identify future directions for research on the social uses and consequences of digital media, the author argues that instead of asking, narrowly, how the digital impacts on learning or participation, we should turn the question around to identify the wide array of factors that shape learning and participation to reveal when and how the digital fits within this. The changing balance in childhood between independence and dependence positions digital media, for at least some young people, as a valued opportunity to explore, learn, and participate. But the consequent intertwining of opportunity and risk in the digital environment means that youth pursue the latter as well as the former in a manner here termed "playing with fire." Although disapproved of by adults, such activities may nonetheless benefit learning, participation, and resilience. The article concludes by observing some key dilemmas for a future policy-relevant agenda that will demand critical reflexivity from researchers if they are to navigate between independence and engagement.
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the use of a popular portable e‐reader device, the Kindle 2, among library and information science (LIS) students and its effects on individual reading practices and the potential applications for library services.
Design/methodology/approach
Using journal logs and diary‐interviews as methods of data collection, the study analyzes the use of the Kindle over a one‐week period by a pool of 20 LIS students at Pratt Institute's School of Information and Library Science.
Findings
The findings reveal four key areas that provide a framework for data interpretation: usage patterns, user interaction, effect on reading habits, and future applications. One major finding is that the portability of the device and its convenience of use anywhere and any time is pivotal for enhancing the students' reading experience and outweighs the limitations of the device's usability.
Research limitations/implications
Results may not be generalizable due to the small size and homogeneity of the sample.
Originality/value
The social and cultural impacts of e‐book readers in everyday life have received little attention so far. In particular, questions about the effects of e‐readers on individual reading practices and the potential applications for library delivery systems have yet to be examined. This study is one of the first to investigate the use of portable e‐book readers.
Research indicates that the extent to which one becomes engaged, transported, or immersed in a narrative influences the narrative's potential to affect subsequent story-related attitudes and beliefs. Explaining narrative effects and understanding the mechanisms responsible depends on our ability to measure narrative engagement in a theoretically meaningful way. This article develops a scale for measuring narrative engagement that is based on a mental models approach to narrative processing. It distinguishes among four dimensions of experiential engagement in narratives: narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence. The scale is developed and validated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with data from viewers of feature film and television, in different viewing situations, and from two different countries. The scale's ability to predict enjoyment and story-consistent attitudes across different programs is presented. Implications for conceptualizing engagement with narratives as well as narrative persuasion and media effects are discussed.
There is an abundance of theory concerning the effects of reading literature. Some researchers do reveal effects, but few explain them. When they do, the textual features examined are neither necessary nor sufficient for literariness. Three experiments are presented here that study the relation between literary text quality and literary reading experience (aesthetic appreciation). The studies contrast effects of original literary texts and manipulated versions in which the degree of foregrounding found in the originals was minimized. To establish effects of foregrounding on literary reading experience, a rereading procedure was used. Results in part showed that foregrounding causes higher scores on aesthetic appreciation after participants read the texts a 2nd time. Furthermore, the literary texts revealed positive perception effects compared to nonforegrounding versions. These results suggest that foregrounding may enhance aesthetic appreciation and may be responsible for effects on perception.
Part one of this paper highlights how students today think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors, as a result of being surrounded by new technology. The author compares these “digital natives” with the older generation who are learning and adopting new technology naming them “digital immigrants”.
This is a book about readers and for them. It describes the delights of reading and the psychological mechanisms that take skilled readers out of the world and lead them, absorbed or entranced, into the world of the book. Students of reading—librarians, critics, cognitive psychologists, and reading specialists—may also find it helpful.
Part I explores the social forces that have shaped reading: the growth and consolidation of the reading habit, the social value system, and the pervasive appeal of narrative. Reading for pleasure is often light reading, but not always: one of pleasure reading's paradoxes is that for many sophisticated readers, a wide range of materials, from the trashiest to the most literate and demanding works, may induce reading trance, and such readers are intrigued by the pleasure they derive from material they know to be culturally worthless.
Reading for pleasure ("ludic reading") is an enormously complex cognitive act that draws on an array of skills and processes in many different domains—attention, comprehension, absorption, and entrancement; reading skill and reading-rate variability; readability and reader preferences; and reading physiology. These component processes of ludic reading are the subject matter of Part II.
Ludic reading is a consciousness-changing activity, and Part III relates reading to fantasy processes such as dreaming and hypnotic trance, on the one hand, and to the sovereignty of the reading experience and the uses readers make of it, on the other, in order to show how the components of reading relate to one another in achieving the capture of consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
explores the merits of various conceptual approaches to the phenomenon of empathy / the principal theories of empathy are outlined, and their strengths, weaknesses, and limitations are discussed / a new theoretical model of empathy is then presented / this model incorporates and integrates much established theory / the presentation is followed by a discussion of pertinent research findings / finally, the new model's implications for affective development are projected
special consideration is given to the changing ecology of empathetic experience / focus is on the new communication technology with its enormous capacity for replacing immediate, affect-producing social exchanges with sign events that abstract, simulate, and represent such exchanges (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Provides an intuitive introduction to the key elements of the authors' theory, the Transportation-Imagery Model, and presents the postulates and their implications. Next, this chapter compares the Transportation-Imagery approach to persuasion with dual-process models of rhetorical persuasion, specifically it contrasts the authors' theory with the Elaboration-Likelihood Model. Selected research implications are discussed. This chapter concludes with a discussion of possible areas in which the ideas of narrative persuasion can be applied. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
When writing in a word processor, it is difficult to achieve a global perspective of a long text. For many writers, this creates a conflict with the strategies of on-screen drafting and revision encouraged by the medium. The lack of a global perspective may lead to an insufficient mental representation of the text, and a difficulty in achieving text coherence. This paper reports recent research directed at global aspects of writing, and suggests some distinctions between different types of global view of a document that may be helpful in the design of a computer-based writing system.
This article reports key findings from the first phase of a research project investigating Net generation age students as they encounter e-learning at five universities in England. We take a critical view of the idea of a distinct generation which has been described using various terms including Net generation and Digital Natives and explore age related differences amongst first year university students. The article draws on evidence from a survey of first year undergraduates studying a range of pure and applied subjects. Overall we found a complex picture amongst first-year students with the sample population appearing to be a collection of minorities. These included a small minority that made little use of some technologies and larger minorities that made extensive use of new technologies. Often the use of new technology was in ways that did not fully correspond with the expectations that arise from the Net generation and Digital Natives theses. The article concludes that whilst there are strong age related variations amongst the sample it is far to simplistic to describe young first-year students born after 1983 as a single generation. The authors find that the generation is not homogenous in its use and appreciation of new technologies and that there are significant variations amongst students that lie within the Net generation age band.
The digitization of the book industry is often said to lead the physical book to an end. Yet, many existing national book markets refuse to adopt the technological change. Consumers' resistance to electronic books is generally viewed as a result of high prices and shortcomings of e-reading technology. The current paper tries to take a step toward a more differentiated view on ebook adoption. There is evidence that the different haptics of a physical book play an important role in ebook acceptance, especially in leisure settings. Therefore, the construct of haptic dissonance is derived from a theoretical basis, conceptualized and hypothesized as being an important antecedent of ebook acceptance. A qualitative study is conducted to show the relevance of haptic dissonance and to make a first proposal for operational measurement. Possible applications involve research on acceptance of or resistance to innovations where haptic attributes are salient.
Two experiments were performed to investigate the influence of VDT (video display terminals) and paper presentation of text on consumption of information (Study 1) measured in the form of convergent production and production of information (Study 2) measured in form of divergent production. The READ test of reading comprehension was used as the convergent task whereas the “Headlines” test was used as the divergent task. Several other factors pertaining to performance were also studied including the PANAS test of positive and negative affect, the STH test of stress, tiredness and hunger, the TRI (Technology Readiness Inventory) and the SE test of stress and energy.The results show that performance in the VDT presentation condition where inferior to that of the Paper presentation condition for both consumption and production of information. Concomitantly, participants in the VDT presentation condition of the consumption of information study reported higher levels of experienced stress and tiredness whereas the participants in the VDT presentation condition of production of information study reported only slightly higher levels of stress.Although the results are discussed in both physiological and psychological terms arguments are made that the incremental effects of VDT text presentation stem mainly from dual-task effects of fulfilling the assignment and working with the computer resulting in a higher cognitive workload.
Generational differences are seen as the cause of wide shifts in our ability to engage with technologies
and the concept of the digital native has gained popularity in certain areas of policy and practice.
This paper provides evidence, through the analysis of a nationally representative survey in the UK,
that generation is only one of the predictors of advanced interaction with the Internet. Breadth of
use, experience, gender and educational levels are also important, indeed in some cases more important
than generational differences, in explaining the extent to which people can be defined as a digital native. The evidence provided suggests that it is possible for adults to become digital natives, especially in the area of learning, by acquiring skills and experience in interacting with information and communication technologies. This paper argues that we often erroneously presume a gap between educators and students and that if such a gap does exist, it is definitely possible to close it.