Emotion and narrative fiction: Interactive influences before, during, and after reading

Emotions are central to the experience of literary narrative fiction. Affect and mood can influence what book people choose, based partly on whether their goal is to change or maintain their current emotional state. Once having chosen a book, the narrative itself acts to evoke and transform emotions, both directly through the events and characters depicted and through the cueing of emotionally valenced memories. Once evoked by the story, these emotions can in turn influence a person's experience of the narrative. Lastly, emotions experienced during reading may have consequences after closing the covers of a book. This article reviews the current state of empirical research for each of these stages, providing a snapshot of what is known about the interaction between emotions and literary narrative fiction. With this, we can begin to sketch the outlines of what remains to be discovered.     

Cognition and Emotion over twenty-five years

In the 25 years since its foundation, Cognition and Emotion has become a leading psychological journal of research on emotion. Here we review some of the ways in which this has occurred. Questions have included how parallel systems of cognition and emotion can operate in emotion regulation and psychological therapies (including the issue of free will), how the cognitive approach to emotion works, how emotion affects attention, memory, and decision making, and how emotion research is moving beyond the individual mind into the space of the interpersonal.     

The interactive effects of listwide control, item-based control, and working memory capacity on Stroop performance

Hypothesized top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of control within conflict-rich environments were examined by presenting participants with a Stroop task in which specific words were usually presented in either congruent or incongruent colors. Incongruent colors were either frequently (high contingency) or infrequently (low contingency) paired with the word. These items were embedded within lists consisting of either 100% congruent or 100% incongruent filler items to create mostly congruent or mostly incongruent lists. Results indicated a significant item-specific congruency effect, which was largest for high contingency responses and within mostly congruent lists. In addition, a significant listwide congruency effect was obtained, and this interacted with working memory capacity (WMC). There were larger listwide congruency effects for low WMC individuals. Finally, the pattern of Stroop interference across lists for low WMC individuals was dependent upon the congruency of the preceding trial. These results support multiple forms of cognitive control, as well as contingency learning, as mechanisms underlying proportion congruence effects in Stroop and other conflict tasks. These findings are interpreted within Braver, Gray, and Burgess's (2007) dual mechanisms of control theory.     

Touching my left elbow: the anatomical structure of the body affects the illusion of self-touch

A self-touch paradigm is used to create the illusion that one is touching one's own left elbow when one is actually touching the examiner's arm. Our new self-touch illusion is sensitive to the anatomical structure of the body: you can touch your left elbow with your right index finger but not with your left index finger. Illusion onset was faster and illusion ratings were higher when participants administered touch using the plausible right index finger compared with the implausible left index finger.     

The effects of group memberships of victims and perpetrators in humanly caused disasters on charitable donations to victims

The effects of group memberships of disaster victims and perpetrators on charitable donations were measured. In Study 1 (N = 92), victim group membership was experimentally varied to demonstrate an ingroup bias. In Study 2 (N = 84), a similar bias was demonstrated by varying perpetrator group membership. In Study 3 (N = 182), both victim and perpetrator group memberships were assessed. Perpetrator group membership interacted with victim group membership. Moreover, donations were highest when both victims and perpetrators shared a group membership. These effects were mediated by empathy with the victims, and perceived responsibility of the donor to intervene and aid the victim. Findings show that a salient perpetrator group can be harnessed to encourage helping of disaster victims.     

Generativity,the Big Five,and Psychosocial Adaptation in Midlife Adults

ABSTRACT The study examines the extent to which 2 sets of personality variables—(1) dispositional traits (and their facets) within the Big Five taxonomy and (2) the adult developmental construct of generativity—are associated with psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults (N=128), conceived as the combination of individual well‐being and positive societal involvements. Generativity is conceived as an adult's concern for and commitment to promoting the well‐being of future generations. Multiple regression analyses showed that dispositional traits were more strongly associated with individual well‐being than was generativity, but generativity was much more strongly associated with positive societal engagement than were the traits. Correlations between dispositional traits and generativity revealed that highly generative adults were elevated on most of the facets of Extraversion and Openness. For the other 3 traits, generativity was positively related to facets of competence, achievement striving, dutifulness, altruism, and trust and negatively related to vulnerability, anxiety, depressiveness, and modesty.     

Effects of syntactic prominence on eye movements during reading

Three experiments explored whether patterns of eye movements during reading might help explain syntactic prominence effects that are typically observed using reaction time tasks. Participants read sentences in which target words were in syntactically prominent or syntactically less prominent positions. Across all three experiments, using three types of syntactic prominence manipulations, there were fewer fixations and shorter reading times for words in more prominent positions, indicating that enhanced accessibility of syntactically prominent words is not caused by increased processing time. Rather, syntactic prominence appears to facilitate early encoding/lexical access and sentence integration processes while also, as shown previously, increasing activation of concepts in a comprehender’s sentence or discourse representation. We propose that enhanced encoding and sentence integration processes can be attributed to an increase in attentional resources for more prominent concepts, and that this increase derives from readers’ immediate sensitivity to informational prominence contours that are signaled by syntax.     

The development of gyrification in childhood and adolescence

Gyrification is the process by which the brain undergoes changes in surface morphology to create sulcal and gyral regions. The period of greatest development of brain gyrification is during the third trimester of pregnancy, a period of time in which the brain undergoes considerable growth. Little is known about changes in gyrification during childhood and adolescence, although considering the changes in gray matter volume and thickness during this time period, it is conceivable that alterations in the brain surface morphology could also occur during this period of development. The formation of gyri and sulci in the brain allows for compact wiring that promotes and enhances efficient neural processing. If cerebral function and form are linked through the organization of neural connectivity, then alterations in neural connectivity, i.e., synaptic pruning, may also alter the gyral and sulcal patterns of the brain. This paper reviews developmental theories of gyrification, computational techniques for measuring gyrification, and the potential interaction between gyrification and neuronal connectivity. We also present recent findings involving alterations in gyrification during childhood and adolescence.     

Developmental changes in dopamine neurotransmission in adolescence: Behavioral implications and issues in assessment

Adolescence is characterized by increased risk-taking, novelty-seeking, and locomotor activity, all of which suggest a heightened appetitive drive. The neurotransmitter dopamine is typically associated with behavioral activation and heightened forms of appetitive behavior in mammalian species, and this pattern of activation has been described in terms of a neurobehavioral system that underlies incentive-motivated behavior. Adolescence may be a time of elevated activity within this system. This review provides a summary of changes within cortical and subcortical dopaminergic systems that may account for changes in cognition and affect that characterize adolescent behavior. Because there is a dearth of information regarding neurochemical changes in human adolescents, models for assessing links between neurochemical activity and behavior in human adolescents will be described using molecular genetic techniques. Furthermore, we will suggest how these techniques can be combined with other methods such as pharmacology to measure the impact of dopamine activity on behavior and how this relation changes through the lifespan.     

Communication Using Camera Phones Among Young Men and Women: Who Sends What to Whom?

This study examined whether the gender of the sender and recipient would influence camera phone usage. 180 college and university students from the Midlands and North of England provided information on communication with friends and family, and on personal importance of image uses. A sub-sample of 130 provided further data on likelihood of sending different kinds of image and the content of recent images sent and received. Many gender similarities were found, together with evidence of the use of images to support heterosexual relationships. However, the results showed greater use of images of significant individuals by the women than among their male counterparts, among all-female dyads and to communicate with female recipients. Overall the results suggest that women use images more than men for relationship maintenance.