The Usual Miracles: How Narrative Style Affects the Processing of Counterintuitive Concepts

Abstract

Popular narratives such as myths or fairy tales regularly contain wondrous phenomena (e.g., a talking cat) that can be defined as minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts, which violate one category of real-world knowledge. Contradicting intuitive world representations, MCI concepts could appear to make the texts in which they occur more difficult to understand. Yet, fairy tales and myths are among the genres with the most cultural impact and the longest historical tradition. They are also often marked by a recognizable style. To test the effect of style on the processing of MCI concepts, we presented micronarratives with context stories written in an unmarked or a fairy-tale style before target sentences. We compared electrophysiological correlates of semantic processing (N400) elicited by MCI concepts, common semantic expectancy violations, and intuitive ideas, presented as critical words within the target sentences and as images during encoding. The results show that narrative style plays a crucial role in MCI processing. Typical N400 effects, as seen in response to MCI concepts after stories written in an unmarked style, were not observed in response to MCI concepts after stories written in a fairy-tale style, suggesting that the characteristic style of the popular genre facilitates the encoding of counterintuitive elements. This result is relevant for neurocognitive models of language comprehension as it highlights the effect of formal text properties on semantic processing and their role in familiarization with and recognition of styles and genres.