Content uploaded by Anezka Kuzmicova
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Anezka Kuzmicova on Jan 10, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative: Views from Embodied Cognition
Abstract and Figures
Defined as vicarious sensorimotor experiencing, mental imagery is a powerful source of aesthetic enjoyment in everyday life and, reportedly, one of the commonest things readers remember about literary narratives in the long term. Furthermore, it is positively correlated with other dimensions of reader response, most notably with emotion. Until recent decades, however, the phenomenon of mental imagery has been largely overlooked by modern literary scholarship. As an attempt to strengthen the status of mental imagery within the literary and, more generally, aesthetic discipline, this dissertation proposes an analysis positioned at a confluence of literary theory and the cognitive sciences, especially the emergent research framework of embodied cognition. Questions asked throughout the dissertation include the following: a) What are the basic varieties of mental imagery in the reading of literary narrative? b) By what contents or narrative strategies are they most likely to be prompted? c) What is it like to experience a mental image of a particular variety? d) What are its psychophysiological underpinnings? e) How does a mental image of a particular variety relate to perception? f) How does it relate to higher-order meaning-making? Four prototypical imagery varieties are distinguished on the basis of two variables with two values each (referential vs. verbal domain; inner vs. outer stance). Gradual transitions and in-between imagery varieties are acknowledged. The imagery typology and related hypotheses are grounded in introspection but carefully supported with indirect empirical evidence and, whenever possible, formulated so as to facilitate direct validation.
Figures - uploaded by Anezka Kuzmicova
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Anezka Kuzmicova
Content may be subject to copyright.
... The perceptual code involves the creation of mental images that are experienced as having perceptual qualities across a range of sensory modalities (Gentsch et al., 2016). Importantly, it appears that readers switch between codes during reading, with some passages evoking vivid imagery, whereas other passages or genres are processed in a verbal code (Kuzmičová, 2014). Kuzmičová (2014) identified, partly based on research and partly based on introspection, four different kinds of mental imagery occurring during reading. ...
... Importantly, it appears that readers switch between codes during reading, with some passages evoking vivid imagery, whereas other passages or genres are processed in a verbal code (Kuzmičová, 2014). Kuzmičová (2014) identified, partly based on research and partly based on introspection, four different kinds of mental imagery occurring during reading. Briefly, and according to her terminology, enactment imagery occurs spontaneously and creates the experience of actually being in the story. ...
... Introspective reports (Kuzmičová, 2014) and theories of reading (Zwaan, 1999) posit that readers experience, at least some of the time, mental images in the mental models they create while reading. These images appear to be comprised of information from multiple sensory modalities . ...
Mental imagery is foundational to human experience, lying at the heart of cognition and reading, however research has failed to conclusively investigate and demonstrate a link. Therefore, we conducted three studies measuring adults' reading and imagery performance. In Study 1, the mental imagery skills of 155 adults were measured using two established self-report measures, namely the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (Psi-Q) and the Spontaneous Use of Imagery Scale (SUIS), and a novel imagery comparison task. In Study 2 (n = 452), a control for speeded processing replaced the SUIS. In Study 3 (n = 236), we added a measure of reading speed. Findings indicate that the objective measurement of mental imagery was associated with reading performance, whereas self-report measures were not. Further, reading comprehension linked more strongly to mental imagery than reading speed did. Findings demonstrate, for the first time, that mental imagery processes are intrinsically linked with reading performance.
... In recent decades, several theorists have formulated predictions concerning imagery-prompting features in narrative fiction (Scarry, 1999;Esrock, 2004;Grünbaum, 2007;Jajdelska, Butler, Kelly, McNeill, & Overy, 2010;Gallese & Wojciehowski, 2011;Kuzmičová, 2012Kuzmičová, , 2013Kuzmičová, , 2014. Albeit formulated largely independently, these predictions partly overlap. ...
... Albeit formulated largely independently, these predictions partly overlap. For example, multiple authors (Grünbaum, 2007;Jajdelska et al., 2010;Kuzmičová, 2012Kuzmičová, , 2013Kuzmičová, , 2014 propose that in the process of making a storyworld come to life through imagery, verbal renditions of bodily movement play a distinctly productive role. To date, this idea has been most comprehensively developed in Kuzmičová's (2013Kuzmičová's ( , 2014 theoretical model of mental imagery in narrative reading. ...
... For example, multiple authors (Grünbaum, 2007;Jajdelska et al., 2010;Kuzmičová, 2012Kuzmičová, , 2013Kuzmičová, , 2014 propose that in the process of making a storyworld come to life through imagery, verbal renditions of bodily movement play a distinctly productive role. To date, this idea has been most comprehensively developed in Kuzmičová's (2013Kuzmičová's ( , 2014 theoretical model of mental imagery in narrative reading. Drawing on the embodied language processing (Pecher & Zwaan, 2005) and enactivist (Noë, 2006) paradigms in the cognitive sciences, the model predicts that the most strongly imageable prose renders physical objects by way of letting them be manipulated through characters' bodily movements and actions, rather than explicitly detailing their visual properties as commonly presupposed (Nünning, 2007;Wolf, 2004). ...
Based on Kuzmičová’s (2014) phenomenological typology of narrative styles, we studied the specific contributions of mental imagery to literary reading experience and to reading behavior by combining questionnaires with eye-tracking methodology. Specifically, we focused on the two main categories in Kuzmičová’s (2014) typology, i.e., texts dominated by an “enactive” style, and texts dominated by a “descriptive” style. “Enactive” style texts render characters interacting with their environment, and “descriptive” style texts render environments dissociated from human action. The quantitative analyses of word category distributions of two dominantly enactive and two dominantly descriptive texts indicated significant differences especially in the number of verbs, with more verbs in enactment compared to descriptive texts. In a second study, participants read two texts (one theoretically cueing descriptive imagery, the other cueing enactment imagery) while their eye movements were recorded. After reading, participants completed questionnaires assessing aspects of the reading experience generally, as well as their text-elicited mental imagery specifically. Results show that readers experienced more difficulties conjuring up mental images during reading descriptive style texts and that longer fixation duration on words were associated with enactive style text. We propose that enactive style involves more imagery processes which can be reflected in eye movement behavior.
... Imagery is the subject of much research. Anežka Kuzmičová (2013Kuzmičová ( , 2014 discusses the prototypical types (enactment, description, speech, rehearsal) of mental imagery evoked by narratives from an embodied cognition perspective. Kuzmičová (2012, p. 275) states that imagery from visual descriptions is not correlated to perceptual experience and resembles the experience of voluntary visual images. ...
... Imagery is the subject of much research. Anežka Kuzmičová (2013Kuzmičová ( , 2014 discusses the prototypical types (enactment, description, speech, rehearsal) of mental imagery evoked by narratives from an embodied cognition perspective. Kuzmičová (2012, p. 275) states that imagery from visual descriptions is not correlated to perceptual experience and resembles the experience of voluntary visual images. ...
The study presents an experiment aimed at discovering similarities and differences in how American and Ukrainian participants perceived contemporary free verse. Three poems were examined from the perspectives of intertextual/infratextual/intratextual context dimensions. The presence of intertextual characteristics – reflecting social reality and metaphoric content – was recognized by the majority in both groups of participants, yet across the groups, there were differences in the degree of value placed on each characteristic. Differences in views on the infratextual contexts reflect the variability of functions performed by the initial/intermediate/closing parts of the poems. As regards intratextual context dimension, there were significant similarities in the participants’ views on the imagery, in the constructed text-worlds, emotional responses, interpretations, and encountered difficulties. The analysis of the intratextual contexts of the poems indicates that some texts may drive readers’ interpretations, thus reducing the role of culture in their reception.
... The progressive development of this capacity of abstraction, which is inherent to language, on the one hand, presides over the creative imagination of a counterfactual world activating simulation processes. These, on the other hand, solicit in the reader mental imagery, i.e., a vivid experience simulated by the reader's mind in the absence of corresponding physical stimuli (see: Kuzmičová, 2013Kuzmičová, , 2014, similarly to those experiments eliciting sensations and "natural" percepts via the brain electrical stimulation, producing unnatural or natural perceptions or movements, even without stimulation of peripheral sensory receptors (Armenta Salas, 2018). In neurological terms, the very act of reading is related to a production of mental images through the activation of the extrastriate visual cortex (Zull, 2002, p. 169), whose area V5/MT is sensitive to processing visual motion. ...
... Different discourses on imagination have given rise to still unsolved questions about its modalities and effects, particularly in relation to the construction of aesthetic and symbolic constraints: they derive from our imaginative abilities to regard and manipulate things and experiences of the real world through the wide spectrum of their unexpressed potentialities, even transcending the given ones. The imaginative manipulation of reality involves the embodied activation of our sensorimotor system, which is reused when the mindbrain processes counterfactual images, elaborates them through language and different media, or when it is receptive to mental imagery (Kuzmičová, 2013(Kuzmičová, , 2014 triggered by linguistic and visual artworks. ...
According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of “mimesis;” this last was intended in two main ways: as “imitation” and as “world construction.” In Aristotle's Poetics , mimesis is theorized as the main form of “world simulation,” giving rise to the complex universe of fiction. The concept of simulation plays a pivotal role in the neurocognitive theories on the embodied mind: within this frame, embodied simulation is intended as a functional prelinguistic activation of the human sensorimotor mechanism. This happens not only with regard to intercorporeality and intersubjectivity in the real world but also in relation to the process of imagination giving rise to literary imagery and to the reader's reception of the fictional world, since human beings share a common sensorimotor apparatus. Imagination is a central concept in the recent neurocognitive studies since it plays a core role in human life and in artistic production and reception. Imagination has been considered as a complex emergent cognitive faculty deeply intertwined with perception, memory, and consciousness, shaping human life and transforming the limited horizon of our perceptual affective understanding, being, and acting. Although there is an immense bulk of literature on this topic, imagination is still an elusive concept: its definition and understanding change according to different heuristic frames—mainly the philosophical, aesthetic, poetic, and cognitive ones—giving rise to debates about its modalities and effects, particularly in relation to the construction of aesthetic and symbolic constraints. In this paper, we claim that scientific research may take advantage from the literary representation of the imaginative faculties, which occurs in specific tests characterized by dynamic images and motion. In such meta-representation of the imagination, we witness the phenomenological emergence of endogenous dynamic processes involving a cluster of cognitive faculties, activated by triggering the reader's embodied simulation. One of the main German poets, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the second part of his masterwork Faust II , intuitively represents the very process of the imagination and its responding to embodied simulation with regard both to the author's creative act and to its reception by the reader. At the crossway between literary and neurocognitive, this study aims to highlight the advantage offered to future transdisciplinary inquiries by the literary representation showing features and dynamics of the still mysterious phenomenon of the imagination.
... VR environments can affect the reader's interpretation of the written stories, which alters the original meaning. A possible solution can be found in how the interplay of embodied cognition (Baceviciute et al., 2021), mental imagery (Kuzmicova, 2013), and visualisation in VR (Pianzola et al., 2019) impacts the inner experience of the reader. ...
This paper explores the transformation of traditional written fiction into an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience. By combining VR technology with specific design methods, the paper proposes creating an adaptable environment that prioritises the text over other perceptible stimuli. The paper introduces Bookwander, an experimental VR reading experience which incorporates four unique design approaches, namely, The Power of Text, Selective Imagery, Scenic Reading, and Playful Reading. Each approach contributes to immersion, interpretation, visualisation, and interaction in distinct ways. The preliminary results from a qualitative pilot study indicate that providing spatial-based content in a reactive environment to the text strikes a suitable balance between traditional reading and a VR experience. Participants felt immersed without compromising the reading experience, and the various visual representations did not hinder interpretation or imagination. The paper concludes with recommendations for further developments in immersive reading and future research directions in this field.
The taxonomies of narratology have proven valuable tools for the analysis of ancient literature, but, since they were mostly forged in the analysis of modern novels, they have also occluded the distinct quality of ancient narrative and its understanding in antiquity. Ancient Greek Texts and Modern Narrative Theory paves the way for a new approach to ancient narrative that investigates its specific logic. Jonas Grethlein's sophisticated discussion of a wide range of literary texts in conjunction with works of criticism sheds new light on such central issues as fictionality, voice, Theory of Mind and narrative motivation. The book provides classicists with an introduction to ancient views of narrative but is also a major contribution to a historically sensitive theory of narrative.
In jüngerer Zeit wurden verschiedene wirkungstheoretische bzw. didaktische Annahmen über den Zusammenhang zwischen textseitigen Stilmerkmalen und Modi der leserseitigen Beteiligung in literarischen Lektüreprozessen mit empirischen Verfahren untersucht. Der folgende Beitrag bietet einen Überblick über Studien zu der Frage, wie sich textseitige stilistische Hervorhebungen (Foregrounding-Elemente) auf die leserseitigen Wahrnehmungs-, Erfahrungs-und Verarbeitungsprozesse auswirken können. Insbesondere werden Forschungen zu solchen stilistischen Textimpulsen vorgestellt, die beim Leser einen Bezug zu vorsprachlichen Empfindungen herstellen, und es werden Schlussfolgerungen zur Spezifität der Interaktion zwischen literarischem Text und Leser gezogen. Eine davon betrifft die Konturierung einer literarischen Lesehaltung und deren eigenartige Offenheit für präreflexive Erfahrungen, die unter Rückgriff auf qualitativ-phänomenologische Studien beschrieben wird. Eine in diesem Sinn ausgeprägte literarische Lesehaltung ist Leitbild einer Unterrichtskonzeption, die, wie auch die Überprüfung ihrer Umsetzung in Interventionsstudien, abschließend vorgestellt und diskutiert wird. 1 Abstract: Recently, various effect-theoretical or didactic assumptions about the relationship between textual stylistic features and modes of reader involvement in literary reading processes have been investigated using empirical methods. The following article provides an overview of studies on the question of how textual stylistic emphasis (foregrounding elements) can affect reader-side processes of perception, experience, and processing. In particular, research is presented on such stylistic textual impulses that relate to pre-linguistic sensations in the reader, and conclusions are drawn about specificity of the interaction between literary text and reader. One of these concerns the contouring of a literary reading attitude and its peculiar openness to preflexive experience, which is described with recourse to qualitative-phenomenological studies. A pronounced literary reading attitude in this sense is the guiding principle of a teaching concept, which, as well as the verification of its implementation in intervention studies, is presented and discussed in conclusion.
Against the background of a widespread language skepticism among film theorists and practitioners, this article aims to highlight the evocative potential of spoken words in cinema. Focusing on an aesthetic device dubbed ‘suggestive verbalization,’ it demonstrates how character speech can powerfully appeal to the spectator’s sensory imagination: language allows film viewers to imagine – in various sensory modes – something they do not see or hear. The article sets out to show that the evocative power of character speech and dialogue is largely uncharted territory in film studies and then defines the term ‘suggestive verbalizations’ more closely. By means of various examples, it subsequently distinguishes four types of suggestive verbalization. Taking the drama theoretical terms ‘messenger report’ and ‘teichoscopy’ as a model, the article suggests a distinction along temporal lines: verbalization-of-the-past, verbalization-of-the-present, verbalization-of-the-future and verbalization-of-generalities. In the final section, a number of functions are discussed that suggestive verbalizations can have for the aesthetics of a film and the viewer’s experience. An implicit goal is to contribute to the ongoing work on the poetics of ‘omission, suggestion and completion’ in the cinema and the phenomenology of the viewer’s imagination. The article thus supports recent attempts to define film not exclusively as a perceptual audiovisual medium but also as a medium that depends on and, in fact, thrives on the sensory imagination of the viewer.
Resumen: En presente trabajo aplicamos los postulados de la cognición corporeizada para el análisis de la experiencia estética del texto literario. Para poder cumplir con dicho objetivo, se utilizan algunos de los principales conceptos de dicho paradigma, así como de otras disciplinas, tales como la fenomenología y la narratología. De entre los postulados principales, se recalca la pertinencia de la noción de la simulación corporeizada, de Gallese, entendido aquí como aquél fenómeno que acontece cuando un ser humano reidentifica su cuerpo con un cuerpo ajeno. Se sugiere, a través del análisis de un texto seleccionado, que en el ámbito literario, el lector efectúa un proceso de simulación respecto a los actos e imágenes que un narrador presenta verbalmente. Abstract: In this paper we apply the postulates of embodied cognition to the analysis of the aesthetic experience of literary texts. To achieve this, we use some of the core concepts of this paradigm, as well as those of other disciplines such as phenomenology and narratology. Among the main postulates, we emphasize the pertinence of Gallese's notion of embodied simulation, understood here as the phenomenon that occurs when a human being reidentifies his body with that of another person. We suggest, through the analysis of a specific text, that in the realm of literature the reader carries out a process of simulation with regards to the actions and images that a narrator presents through words.
Theories of Theories of Mind brings together contributions by a distinguished international team of philosophers, psychologists, and primatologists, who between them address such questions as: what is it to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people? How does such an understanding develop in the normal child? Why, unusually, does it fail to develop? And is any such mentalistic understanding shared by members of other species? The volume's four parts together offer a state of the art survey of the major topics in the theory-theory/simulationism debate within philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, the aetiology of autism and primatology. The volume will be of great interest to researchers and students in all areas interested in the 'theory of mind' debate.