The roles of reader's feelings in understanding narratives: Forefeel, empathy, and a sense of strangeness

Abstract

This study examined the cross-domain, anticipatory, and self-referential roles of affect (Miall, 1989) in reading short mystery novels. In Experiment 1, undergraduate students either read an entire story once or read the same story twice. During the first reading, these participants read only the first part of the story, and during the second reading, they read the entire story. They rated the importance of each sentence. Then they either described a prediction or their impression of the story. Finally, they created a title. In Experiment 2, the first group rated the importance of each sentence. The second group rated the feelings of understanding: forefeel, empathy, and a sense of strangeness. The results of both experiments showed that the relative importance of sentences shifted between first reading and second reading. As they read the end of the story, empathy increased but a sense of strangeness decreased. The results of description showed that the readers updated their interpretations in order to understand the story correctly.