Differences between estimating protagonists’ emotions and evaluating readers’ emotions in narrative comprehension

We examined the differences between estimating the emotions of protagonists and evaluating those of readers in narrative comprehension. Half of the participants read stories and rated the emotional states of the protagonists, while the other half of the participants rated their own emotional states while reading the stories. The results showed that reading comprehension was facilitated when highly extraverted participants read stories about, and rated the emotional experiences of, extraverted protagonists, with personalities similar to their own. However, the same facilitative effect was not observed for less extraverted participants, nor was it observed for either type of participants under the condition in which participants rated their own emotional experiences. Thus, at least for highly extraverted participants, readers both facilitated the construction of a situation model and correctly estimated the emotional states of protagonists who were similar to themselves, perhaps due to empathy.     

Effects of repeated retrieval on long-term retention in a nonverbal learning task in younger children

Many studies have shown the benefits for long term retention of repeated retrieval during learning in verbal tasks, but few have shown its effectiveness using nonverbal materials. The aim of this study was to examine whether the retention benefits of repeated retrieval extend to preschool children performing a spatial location memory task. In this task, the children first studied where eight small toys were located in a partitioned box. Then, in the repeated retrieval condition, the children were asked to put each one of the toys in its place by themselves three times successively with feedback, whereas in the repeated study condition, they were asked to put each toy in its place with the experimenter showing them the correct location. Half of the children were then immediately tested and the remaining half tested after one day. The results showed that the 5 and 6 year old children in the retrieval condition retained location memory for the toys longer than those in the study condition in a memory task involving spatial content and enactment components. These findings have deep theoretical implications for the critical role of retrieval effort in long-term retention, and highlight the efficacy of repeated retrieval for different developmental ages and tasks.     

The effect of a protagonist’s emotional shift on situation model construction

We examined whether readers monitored protagonists' emotional shifts and whether reader engagement influenced situation model construction. Participants read narratives that included an emotional shift in the middle of the story. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to read stories appreciatively and to empathize with the protagonists. In Experiment 2, readers were instructed to read the stories normally, as if they were reading novels. The results from the two experiments suggest that readers monitor temporal and causal shifts as well as protagonists' emotional shifts in stories. Moreover, in Experiment 1 readers detected temporal and causal shifts regardless of th e degree oftheir engagement during the empathetic reading, while in Experiment 2 the high ego involvement group detected causal shifts during the normal reading. Thus, these results show both that readers monitor protagonists' emotional states and that reader emotional engagement c an influence situationmodel construction with normal reading.