Textual determinants of a component of literary identification

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Kotovych ◽  
Peter Dixon ◽  
Marisa Bortolussi ◽  
Mark Holden
Keyword(s):  
Close Association ◽  
First Person ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Conversational Implicatures ◽  
Third Person

Three experiments were conducted on how properties of the text control one aspect of the process of identifying with the central character in a story. In particular, we were concerned with textual determinants of character transparency, that is, the extent to which the character’s actions and attitudes are clear and understandable. In Experiment 1, we hypothesized that the narrator in first-person narratives is transparent because narratorial implicatures (analogous to Grice’s (1975) notion of conversational implicatures) lead readers to attribute their own knowledge and experience to the narrator. Consistent with our predictions, the results indicated that stating the inferred information explicitly leads readers to rate the narrator’s thoughts and actions as more difficult to understand. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether this effect could be explained by differences in style between the original and modified versions of the text. The results demonstrated that there was no effect of adding text when the material was unrelated to narratorial implicatures. In Experiment 3, we hypothesized that transparency of the central character in a third-person narrative can be produced when the consistent use of free-indirect speech produces a close association between the narrator and the character; in this case, readers may attribute knowledge and experience to the character as well as the narrator. As predicted, the central character’s thoughts and actions were rated as more difficult to understand when the markers for free-indirect speech were removed. We argue that transparency may be produced through the use of what are essential conversational processes invoked in service of understanding the narrator as a conversational participant.

Direct and indirect speech in Mambila

1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Perrin
Keyword(s):  
Main Clause ◽  
Summer Institute ◽  
First Person ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Summer Institute Of Linguistics ◽  
Person Reference ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Embedded Clause

The categories of DIRECT SPEECH and INDIRECT SPEECH may be distinguished by differing policies of pronoun reference. Direct speech takes its pronoun orientation from the clause in which it is immediately embedded: for example, in the following sentence: (I) John Said to Peter, ‘I Can see you’, the first person pronoun I refers to the participant who is identified as speaker in the preceding clause (John said to peter) and the seconf person you refers to the participant identified as addressee. Of the two clauses involved, the second or embedded clause (‘I can see you’) May conveniently be referred to as the quotation content. The first or main clause may be referred to as the Reporting Clause; this correspondes ti the use of the term Margin in recent studies from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Lowe, 1969; Pike, 1966; Pike & Lowe, 1969) from which the inspiration for this paper has been taken. Any third person reference in the quotation content in direct speech must refer to a participant who is neither speaker nor addressee in the reporting clause.

First-Person Experiments in Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Parameters ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Mental Contents

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.

Effects of Light-Hearted and Serious Entertainment on Enjoyment of the First and Third Person

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Enjoyment ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.

Praxeology, Imperatives, and Shifts of View

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benj Hellie
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Practical Metaphysics ◽  
The Way

Recent neo-Anscombean work in praxeology (aka ‘philosophy of practical reason’), salutarily, shifts focus from an alienated ‘third-person’ viewpoint on practical reason to an embedded ‘first-person’ view: for example, the ‘naive rationalizations’ of Michael Thompson, of form ‘I am A-ing because I am B-ing’, take up the agent’s view, in the thick of action. Less salutary, in its premature abandonment of the first-person view, is an interpretation of these naive rationalizations as asserting explanatory links between facts about organically structured agentive processes in progress, followed closely by an inflationary project in ‘practical metaphysics’. If, instead, praxeologists chase first-personalism all the way down, both fact and explanation vanish (and with them, the possibility of metaphysics): what is characteristically practical is endorsement of nonpropositional imperatival content, chained together not explanatorily, but through limits on intelligibility. A connection to agentive behavior must somehow be reestablished—but this can (and can only) be done ‘transcendentally’.

Seeming to Seem

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
The Third Person

Dennett’s account of consciousness starts from third-person considerations. I argue this is wise, since beginning with first-person access precludes accommodating the third-person access we have to others’ mental states. But Dennett’s first-person operationalism, which seeks to save the first person in third-person, operationalist terms, denies the occurrence of folk-psychological states that one doesn’t believe oneself to be in, and so the occurrence of folk-psychological states that aren’t conscious. This conflicts with Dennett’s intentional-stance approach to the mental, on which we discern others’ mental states independently of those states’ being conscious. We can avoid this conflict with a higher-order theory of consciousness, which saves the spirit of Dennett’s approach, but enables us to distinguish conscious folk-psychological states from nonconscious ones. The intentional stance by itself can’t do this, since it can’t discern a higher-order awareness of a psychological state. But we can supplement the intentional stance with the higher-order theoretical apparatus.

scholarly journals When the World Breaks Down: A 3-Stage Existential Model of Nihilism in Schizophrenia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Philipp Klar ◽  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Pathological Development ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
Intentional Structure

The existential crisis of nihilism in schizophrenia has been reported since the early days of psychiatry. Taking first-person accounts concerning nihilistic experiences of both the self and the world as vantage point, we aim to develop a dynamic existential model of the pathological development of existential nihilism. Since the phenomenology of such a crisis is intrinsically subjective, we especially take the immediate and pre-reflective first-person perspective’s (FPP) experience (instead of objectified symptoms and diagnoses) of schizophrenia into consideration. The hereby developed existential model consists of 3 conceptualized stages that are nested into each other, which defines what we mean by existential. At the same time, the model intrinsically converges with the phenomenological concept of the self-world structure notable inside our existential framework. Regarding the 3 individual stages, we suggest that the onset or first stage of nihilistic pathogenesis is reflected by phenomenological solipsism, that is, a general disruption of the FPP experience. Paradigmatically, this initial disruption contains the well-known crisis of common sense in schizophrenia. The following second stage of epistemological solipsism negatively affects all possible perspectives of experience, that is, the first-, second-, and third-person perspectives of subjectivity. Therefore, within the second stage, solipsism expands from a disruption of immediate and pre-reflective experience (first stage) to a disruption of reflective experience and principal knowledge (second stage), as mirrored in abnormal epistemological limitations of principal knowledge. Finally, the experience of the annihilation of healthy self-consciousness into the ultimate collapse of the individual’s existence defines the third stage. The schizophrenic individual consequently loses her/his vital experience since the intentional structure of consciousness including any sense of reality breaks down. Such a descriptive-interpretative existential model of nihilism in schizophrenia may ultimately serve as input for future psychopathological investigations of nihilism in general, including, for instance, its manifestation in depression.

Meeting of minds: Narratives as a tool to reduce prejudice toward stigmatized group members

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022110127
Author(s):  
Nuri Kim ◽  
Cuimin Lim
Keyword(s):  
Social Presence ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Intergroup Contact ◽  
First Person ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Intergroup Anxiety ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Social Presence ◽  
Group Members

This study investigates a mechanism of mediated intergroup contact effects that occurs through experiencing social presence of a stigmatized outgroup character. Conceiving narrative texts as a context for mediated intergroup contact, we experimentally test ( N = 505) the effects of narrative perspective (first vs. third person) and the photograph of the outgroup protagonist (present vs. absent) on perceived social presence of the outgroup character. We further test whether experiencing the outgroup protagonist as socially present affects intergroup outcomes (i.e., perspective-taking, intergroup anxiety, outgroup knowledge, and outgroup attitudes). Findings indicate that first-person narratives are more effective than third-person narratives in inducing social presence of the stigmatized outgroup character; photos, unexpectedly, did not have such an effect. Social presence, in turn, plays a key role in facilitating positive intergroup outcomes from reading online narrative texts. The implications of our findings are discussed.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Embodied Mental Imagery Improves Memory

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110092
Author(s):  
Quentin Marre ◽  
Nathalie Huet ◽  
Elodie Labeye
Keyword(s):  
Motor Imagery ◽  
Mental Imagery ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Memory Efficiency ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Emotional Systems

According to embodied cognition theory, cognitive processes are grounded in sensory, motor and emotional systems. This theory supports the idea that language comprehension and access to memory are based on sensorimotor mental simulations, which does indeed explain experimental results for visual imagery. These results show that word memorization is improved when the individual actively simulates the visual characteristics of the object to be learned. Very few studies, however, have investigated the effectiveness of more embodied mental simulations, that is, simulating both the sensory and motor aspects of the object (i.e., motor imagery) from a first-person perspective. The recall performances of 83 adults were analysed in four different conditions: mental rehearsal, visual imagery, third-person motor imagery, and first-person motor imagery. Results revealed a memory efficiency gradient running from low-embodiment strategies (i.e., involving poor perceptual and/or motor simulation) to high-embodiment strategies (i.e., rich simulation in the sensory and motor systems involved in interactions with the object). However, the benefit of engaging in motor imagery, as opposed to purely visual imagery, was only observed when participants adopted the first-person perspective. Surprisingly, visual and motor imagery vividness seemed to play a negligible role in this effect of the sensorimotor grounding of mental imagery on memory efficiency.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document