Empirical Studies of Literature --

Seilman and Larsen, 1989

Seilman, Uffe, & Steen Larsen. "Personal Resonance to Literature." Poetics 18 (1989): 165-177.
index

Summary

Seilman and Larsen begin with two theses: first, "[T]he feeling of personal resonance when reading literary texts arises when the reader is reminded of personal experiences from the past in which the reader had an active role." Second, "[R]eader's appreciation of literary texts can be better understood in terms of mobilization of such empirical self knowledge than in terms of general knowledge of texts and routine sequences of action."

They distinguish prosaic reportage from literary texts by reader expectations, asserting that the veridical quality of general reportage is contrasted with verisimilitude in literary text, and that "verisimilitude seems to be a decisive feature of 'good' literature" (166). Supporting these assertions, they advance Bruner's analogy between scientific and artistic hypotheses. The latter are not testable like scientific hypotheses, but are evaluated via their 'fit' with actual human experience, whether they seem possible, perhaps even probable within the artist's context. They also note Abelson's suggestion, that computers will be unable to 'appreciate' verisimilitude ( Langer's "semblence of events lived and felt" (168) ) because they lack the requisite felt experiences of living-in-a-body.

Next they broach the question of how literary appreciation might be distinguished from "ordinary text comprehension" (166). This begins with the view of cognitivistic psychology, distinguishing text knowledge (linguistic knowledge of lexicon and grammar) and "pragmatic knowledge of speech acts and conventional text structures ..." (166), and "world knowledge," which provides a non-linguistic referential context necessary for the reader to understand and respond to the text. From this 'knowledge' the reader may construct a framework to flesh out the narrative which, in itself, cannot incorporate and present all the details of a lived experience.

The authors note an aspect of the reading experience they believe is preferentially evoked by literary reading, calling it "personal resonance to literature" (167), asserting that previous attempts to account for this aspect of the experience are compromised by the introduction of an "empirically improbable" (168) mental entity called the 'self'. They suggest that an "empirical self" may be constructed based on particular knowledge, distinguished from general knowledge of the world--the "personally experienced autobiographical memories" (168). The assumption is stated, that "the experience of personal resonance to a text when pieces of this self-knowledge are mobilized during reading" (169). Memories so mobilized need not be conscious memories, but may become conscious once mobilized by the text. They then assert that such 'remindings' are not causative, but symptomatic of a reader's personal involvement with the text. Contra Black and Seifert, Sielman and Larsen suggest that the content and the "'depth' or level in the hierarchy of self-knowledge" (169) is important, not the quantity of remindings.

Their experiments, performed with twenty psychology students divided into two groups, attempted to test the hypotheses proposed by asking "readers to be attentive to those occasions during reading when they come to think of something they have experienced" (170), marking the text where this occurred. The subjects were interviewed about their memories after their reading.

They hypothesized that the nature of the remindings would be more personal when reading a literary text than when reading an expository text, but did not anticipate any significant difference in the number of remindings provoked.

They also hypothesized that the number of remindings would be greater at the beginning of the text, to facilitate the construction of an adequate representation of the universe of discourse.

Analysis of the responses found that the number of remindings was similar for the two texts, but the quality differed: the literary text provoked twice as many memories of experiences wherein the reader had taken an active part than did the expository text. The researchers interpret these findings as support for their hypothesis that the "remindings are conscious manifestations of a process of recruiting previous, specific knowledge in order to understand the text one is reading" (174), and that a literary text "will require more intense mobilization of knowledge in the beginning than an expository text" (174). They also note an anomalous feature in that "purely descriptive passages seemed to elicit relatively many remindings in the subjects, whereas passages concerning action and communication elicited almost none" (176).

Critique

In discussion, there was little sympathy for the way I attempted to problematize the essay by Seilman and Larsen. I asserted that the term, "personal resonance," was poorly defined, eliciting a response from others that it was equivalent to affect and memories, or at least intended to be. That is an inadequate explanation, however, since if that were the meaning then the terms "affect" and "memories" would have been adequate. The authors definition of the term refers to that which arises "when the reader is reminded of personal experiences from the past in which the reader had an active role" (165). That seems an adequate answer, except that the authors problematize it when they state that "[t]he theory does not presuppose any vaguely defined concept of 'self' or invoke special mental entities to account for the phenomenon of personal resonance but deals only with the structure of a person's knowledge of past experience" (165). The authors recognize that without an experiencing agent experience cannot happen and, in consequence, they introduce the idea of an empirical self, defined as "[t]he subcategory of a person's knowledge of specific occurrences and facts that involve himself in some way [...]" (168-9). But this "knowledge" of specific occurrences and facts cannot occur without a "knowing" entity, precisely that vaguely defined concept of self, a mental entity, specifically eschewed in their opening statement, the site of the personal resonance which is a central issue of this essay.

In like manner, my questioning of the meaning of the terms "pieces of self-knowledge," "mobilization," and "appreciation" was rejected as specious and unwarranted. One suggestion urged that these terms were defined operationally. One objection to that assertion is that, in each case, the operations by which the terms are to be defined are, again, those of the "self" which the authors problematized.

Acknowledging that Seilman and Larsen may have intended to give a nod to the fact that our ideas of the "self" are troubled in many ways, they might have been better off (certainly would have been so with this reader) had they simply stated that they were aware that such problems existed, but that for the purposes of this study they would assume the existence of an experiencing agent, such as the one reading their essay.

The authors introduced the term, "remindings," first as events "elicited" by the texts, but went on to state that their experimental study showed that they were elicited as a coping strategy of the reader's intellect as it endeavored to construct a schema for the story. As a result, they found that most of the "remindings" tended to occur "particularly in the beginning of the texts" (175). This dichotomous definition may elicit another dichotomy, the debate over whether the text or the reader is primary, and it could be avoided by explicitly defining it as an interaction between the two, with determinable regularities.

On a more positive note, their discussion of "world knowledge" and the use to which it is put, ties in nicely with the findings of Bortolussi and Dixon, that the

process of using one's own knowledge and experience in the service of constructing narratorial implicatures produces identification because the narrator is now seen to have the same kind of experiences as the reader. In effect, the text invites readers, through narratorial implicatures, to construct a representation of the narrator that shares important elements of the readers' backgrounds and attitudes. (90)

Moreover, many findings of Bortolussi and Dixon in this area harmonize well with the idea of personal resonance advanced and experimentally confirmed by Seilman and Larsen.

I continue to press the issue about the lack of precision, even the confusion, in the definition of crucial terms used by Seilman and Larsen, because the history of the development of any of the sciences demonstrates that early choices are critical. The usefulness of the taxonomic entity, personal resonance, has been demonstrated, but the operational definition remains ambiguous, primarily as a result of the ambiguity of some of the concepts surrounding it. It is not clear why the debate regarding the "self" had to be introduced at all, since the results of the experiment stand though the treatment of the "self" is inadequate.

Reference

Bortolussi, M., and Dixon, P. Psychonarratology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Document created December 1st 2005

Seilman and Larsen, 1989
Seilman, Uffe, & Steen Larsen. "Personal Resonance to Literature." Poetics 18 (1989): 165-177.	index
Summary
Seilman and Larsen begin with two theses: first, "[T]he feeling of personal resonance when reading literary texts arises when the reader is reminded of personal experiences from the past in which the reader had an active role." Second, "[R]eader's appreciation of literary texts can be better understood in terms of mobilization of such empirical self knowledge than in terms of general knowledge of texts and routine sequences of action."
They distinguish prosaic reportage from literary texts by reader expectations, asserting that the veridical quality of general reportage is contrasted with verisimilitude in literary text, and that "verisimilitude seems to be a decisive feature of 'good' literature" (166). Supporting these assertions, they advance Bruner's analogy between scientific and artistic hypotheses. The latter are not testable like scientific hypotheses, but are evaluated via their 'fit' with actual human experience, whether they seem possible, perhaps even probable within the artist's context. They also note Abelson's suggestion, that computers will be unable to 'appreciate' verisimilitude ( Langer's "semblence of events lived and felt" (168) ) because they lack the requisite felt experiences of living-in-a-body.
Next they broach the question of how literary appreciation might be distinguished from "ordinary text comprehension" (166). This begins with the view of cognitivistic psychology, distinguishing text knowledge (linguistic knowledge of lexicon and grammar) and "pragmatic knowledge of speech acts and conventional text structures ..." (166), and "world knowledge," which provides a non-linguistic referential context necessary for the reader to understand and respond to the text. From this 'knowledge' the reader may construct a framework to flesh out the narrative which, in itself, cannot incorporate and present all the details of a lived experience.
The authors note an aspect of the reading experience they believe is preferentially evoked by literary reading, calling it "personal resonance to literature" (167), asserting that previous attempts to account for this aspect of the experience are compromised by the introduction of an "empirically improbable" (168) mental entity called the 'self'. They suggest that an "empirical self" may be constructed based on particular knowledge, distinguished from general knowledge of the world--the "personally experienced autobiographical memories" (168). The assumption is stated, that "the experience of personal resonance to a text when pieces of this self-knowledge are mobilized during reading" (169). Memories so mobilized need not be conscious memories, but may become conscious once mobilized by the text. They then assert that such 'remindings' are not causative, but symptomatic of a reader's personal involvement with the text. Contra Black and Seifert, Sielman and Larsen suggest that the content and the "'depth' or level in the hierarchy of self-knowledge" (169) is important, not the quantity of remindings.
Their experiments, performed with twenty psychology students divided into two groups, attempted to test the hypotheses proposed by asking "readers to be attentive to those occasions during reading when they come to think of something they have experienced" (170), marking the text where this occurred. The subjects were interviewed about their memories after their reading.
They hypothesized that the nature of the remindings would be more personal when reading a literary text than when reading an expository text, but did not anticipate any significant difference in the number of remindings provoked.
They also hypothesized that the number of remindings would be greater at the beginning of the text, to facilitate the construction of an adequate representation of the universe of discourse.
Analysis of the responses found that the number of remindings was similar for the two texts, but the quality differed: the literary text provoked twice as many memories of experiences wherein the reader had taken an active part than did the expository text. The researchers interpret these findings as support for their hypothesis that the "remindings are conscious manifestations of a process of recruiting previous, specific knowledge in order to understand the text one is reading" (174), and that a literary text "will require more intense mobilization of knowledge in the beginning than an expository text" (174). They also note an anomalous feature in that "purely descriptive passages seemed to elicit relatively many remindings in the subjects, whereas passages concerning action and communication elicited almost none" (176).
Critique
In discussion, there was little sympathy for the way I attempted to problematize the essay by Seilman and Larsen. I asserted that the term, "personal resonance," was poorly defined, eliciting a response from others that it was equivalent to affect and memories, or at least intended to be. That is an inadequate explanation, however, since if that were the meaning then the terms "affect" and "memories" would have been adequate. The authors definition of the term refers to that which arises "when the reader is reminded of personal experiences from the past in which the reader had an active role" (165). That seems an adequate answer, except that the authors problematize it when they state that "[t]he theory does not presuppose any vaguely defined concept of 'self' or invoke special mental entities to account for the phenomenon of personal resonance but deals only with the structure of a person's knowledge of past experience" (165). The authors recognize that without an experiencing agent experience cannot happen and, in consequence, they introduce the idea of an empirical self, defined as "[t]he subcategory of a person's knowledge of specific occurrences and facts that involve himself in some way [...]" (168-9). But this "knowledge" of specific occurrences and facts cannot occur without a "knowing" entity, precisely that vaguely defined concept of self, a mental entity, specifically eschewed in their opening statement, the site of the personal resonance which is a central issue of this essay.
In like manner, my questioning of the meaning of the terms "pieces of self-knowledge," "mobilization," and "appreciation" was rejected as specious and unwarranted. One suggestion urged that these terms were defined operationally. One objection to that assertion is that, in each case, the operations by which the terms are to be defined are, again, those of the "self" which the authors problematized.
Acknowledging that Seilman and Larsen may have intended to give a nod to the fact that our ideas of the "self" are troubled in many ways, they might have been better off (certainly would have been so with this reader) had they simply stated that they were aware that such problems existed, but that for the purposes of this study they would assume the existence of an experiencing agent, such as the one reading their essay.
The authors introduced the term, "remindings," first as events "elicited" by the texts, but went on to state that their experimental study showed that they were elicited as a coping strategy of the reader's intellect as it endeavored to construct a schema for the story. As a result, they found that most of the "remindings" tended to occur "particularly in the beginning of the texts" (175). This dichotomous definition may elicit another dichotomy, the debate over whether the text or the reader is primary, and it could be avoided by explicitly defining it as an interaction between the two, with determinable regularities.
On a more positive note, their discussion of "world knowledge" and the use to which it is put, ties in nicely with the findings of Bortolussi and Dixon, that the process of using one's own knowledge and experience in the service of constructing narratorial implicatures produces identification because the narrator is now seen to have the same kind of experiences as the reader. In effect, the text invites readers, through narratorial implicatures, to construct a representation of the narrator that shares important elements of the readers' backgrounds and attitudes. (90) Moreover, many findings of Bortolussi and Dixon in this area harmonize well with the idea of personal resonance advanced and experimentally confirmed by Seilman and Larsen.
I continue to press the issue about the lack of precision, even the confusion, in the definition of crucial terms used by Seilman and Larsen, because the history of the development of any of the sciences demonstrates that early choices are critical. The usefulness of the taxonomic entity, personal resonance, has been demonstrated, but the operational definition remains ambiguous, primarily as a result of the ambiguity of some of the concepts surrounding it. It is not clear why the debate regarding the "self" had to be introduced at all, since the results of the experiment stand though the treatment of the "self" is inadequate.
Reference
Bortolussi, M., and Dixon, P. Psychonarratology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.