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Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative: Views from Embodied Cognition
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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.
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... 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.
... 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. ...
The polemic idea that media “rots children’s minds” and that reading, in contrast, stimulates the imagination is not new, but is theoretically problematic and has largely escaped empirical falsification. A key aspect of imagination is mental imagery, namely the internal sensorimotor simulation of external events before the mind’s eye, ear, nose, and so forth. Here, a novel experiment tests whether viewing film clips in comparison to reading differently affects adults’ (n = 239) mental imagery, using a preregistered, within-subjects, randomized, blinded, and counter-balanced experimental design. Mental imagery response latencies after exposure to film clips or reading figuratively rich texts were modeled as a function of time using an mental comparison task (MCT). Further, film clips were either fast-paced or slow-paced. Compared to reading, viewing film clips resulted in initially slower MCT performance, as evidenced by a significant Media × Time interaction. However, contrary to expectation, there was no statistically significant difference between fast-paced and slow-paced clips on the MCT. Findings suggest that reading stimulates mental imagery compared to viewing films, which has implications for education and society, opening up new avenues for future research and educational practice.
Available at: https://rdcu.be/dUyYu . 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.
Based on current research on the triad of language, literature, and emotion in cognitive linguistics, (neuro-)psychology, and cognitive poetics and stylistics, the present chapter sheds light on specific stylistic strategies and their potential emotive qualities. The chapter focuses on how stylistic devices such as patterns of rhythm and sound in literature are functionalized to evoke emotional responses in readers. It thus deals only indirectly with questions of (mimetic) representations of emotion and emotionality in literature. The chapter outlines the theoretical discussion and current state of debate in the interdisciplinary field of emotion research and stylistics and argues for a stronger consideration of mood as an emotive reader response in its own right. As point of departure for an analytical framework, it takes up a gestalt theoretical framework of poetic rhythm. Drawing on a conceptualization of rhythm as a perceptional category rather than a property of a text as well as an embodied cognition model of reader engagement in literature, the chapter proposes a phonostylistic approach. This means to understand a written text as a potential phonotext whose stylistic features of rhythm, accentuation, sound and tone can be seen as crucial with regard to the textual evocation of emotive reader responses.
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.
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.
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.
Author Representations in Literary Reading investigates the role of the author in the mind of the reader. It is the first book-length empirical study on generated author inferences by readers of literature. It bridges the gap between theories which hold that the author is irrelevant and those that give him prominence. By combining insights and methods from both cognitive psychology and literary theory, this book contributes to a better understanding of how readers process literary texts and what role their assumptions about an author play. A series of experiments demonstrate that readers generate author inferences during the process of reading, which they use to create an image of the text’s author. The findings suggest that interpretations about the author play a pivotal role in the literary reading process. This book is relevant to scholars and students in all areas of the cognitive sciences, including literary studies and psychology.