A large body of research has outlined how mental models are formed by comprehending texts, yet relatively less work has been conducted in the field of comprehending artworks. Trans-symbolic comprehension (TSC) processes have been theorized to partially account for how mental models are formed across media. The current study tested whether…

This study was conducted to investigate two factors that affect the processing of the outcomes of intentional actions. Participants read three-sentence stories that varied the presence of an explicit goal and the semantic association between the outcome and its situational context (i.e., physical or virtual location). The ease of processing…

In some narratives one world is embedded within the main world of the story, which we refer to as the base world, and elements from one world can cross over into the other. This study explored the conditions in which readers perceive character crossover as being likely to occur. Participants read stories that set up the potential for a character…

Stories are a powerful means to change people's attitudes and beliefs. The aim of the current work was to shed light on the role of argument strength (argument quality) in narrative persuasion. The present study examined the influence of strong versus weak arguments on attitudes in a low or high narrative context. Moreover, baseline attitudes,…

Several studies have shown that narratives can influence readers' beliefs about themselves. In the present study, our goal was to investigate whether stories portraying a strong protagonist can positively influence recipients' beliefs of being in control of events in their own lives (self-related control beliefs). Experiment 1 showed that…

A discourse recognition theory derived from more general memory formulations would be broad in its psychological implications. This study compared discourse recognition with some established profiles of item recognition. Participants read 10 stories either once or twice each. They then rated their confidence in recognizing explicit, paraphrased,…