"Fact versus Fiction – How paratextual information shapes our reading processes"

Altmann, Ulrike; Bohm, Isabel; Lubrich, Oliver; Menninghaus, Winfried; Jacobs, Arthur (2012). "Fact versus Fiction – How paratextual information shapes our reading processes". Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 9(1), pp. 22-29. Oxford University Press 10.1093/scan/nss098

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Our life is full of stories: some of them depict real-life events and were reported, e.g. in the daily news or in autobiographies, whereas other stories, as often presented to us in movies and novels, are fictional. However, we have only little insights in the neurocognitive processes underlying the reading of factual as compared to fictional contents. We investigated the neurocognitive effects of reading short narratives, labeled to be either factual or fictional. Reading in a factual mode engaged an activation pattern suggesting an action-based reconstruction of the events depicted in a story. This process seems to be past-oriented and leads to shorter reaction times at the behavioral level. In contrast, the brain activation patterns corresponding to reading fiction seem to reflect a constructive simulation of what might have happened. This is in line with studies on imagination of possible past or future events.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Germanic Languages

UniBE Contributor:

Lubrich, Oliver

Subjects:

400 Language > 430 German & related languages
800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 830 German & related literatures

ISSN:

1749-5024

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Simone Gehr

Date Deposited:

26 Mar 2014 14:07

Last Modified:

22 May 2023 16:24

Publisher DOI:

10.1093/scan/nss098

PubMed ID:

22956671

Uncontrolled Keywords:

emotion, emotion regulation, fMRI, fact, fiction, literature, narrative, reading, theory of mind

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.42925

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/42925

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