Cognitive Processes in Reading Literary Texts: The Influence of Context, Goals and Situations

Abstract

Is literary meaning amenable to an explanation within the cognitive paradigm of psychology? A convention-oriented explanation exists as opposed to an autonomous ontology of meaning. The central difficulty of explanation is its lack of empirical bases. The hypothesis that encoding—which is action and goal specific—and retrieval are activated by specific conventions and caused by different types of elaboration and inference is tested. The dependent variables were studied in a 2 × 2 free recall experiment. The hypothesis mentioned was tested in a 2 × 2 × 2 recognition experiment. The results for a cognitive conception of literary meaning are significant. The methodological and theoretical consequences are discussed.