The landscape of time in literary reception: Character experience and narrative action

Abstract

This experiment examined responses to excerpted episodes from short stories that either focused on action or on the experiences of the characters. The effects of instructional sets to approach the texts from the viewpoint of subjective involvement or objective detachment were also studied. The two story types and two reading sets were factorially combined in a within-subjects design. Scale ratings of the story excerpts and reading times (syllables per second) were measured. A total of subjects (20 males and 20 females) read six segments from each of the episodes as quickly and accurately as possible. Pretest data were obtained for each segment indicating how much it “provided insight into the characters' experiences”, and its level of suspense and surprise. Segments which “provided in sight” were read more slowly, whereas surprising segments were read more quickly. Under the Subjective Set, subjects slowed the pace of reading if they judged the text to be “rich in meaning about life”. For the Objective Set, stories that were judged to have evoked “images” were read more slowly. Females were more responsive to the Subjective Set than were the males, finding the stories to be “richer in meaning” and more “personally relevant”. Females also slowed their reading pace for segments that they judged to be “rich in meaning about life”, while males slowed down if the stories evoked “images”.