Abstract: | Personal pronouns have been shown to influence cognitive perspective taking
during comprehension. Studies using single sentences found that 3rd
person pronouns facilitate the construction of a mental model from an observer’s
perspective, whereas 2nd person pronouns support an actor’s
perspective. The direction of the effect for 1st person pronouns
seems to depend on the situational context. In the present study, we
investigated how personal pronouns influence discourse comprehension when people
read fiction stories and if this has consequences for affective components like
emotion during reading or appreciation of the story. We wanted to find out if
personal pronouns affect immersion and arousal, as well as appreciation of
fiction. In a natural reading paradigm, we measured electrodermal activity and
story immersion, while participants read literary stories with 1st
and 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist. In addition,
participants rated and ranked the stories for appreciation. Our results show
that stories with 1st person pronouns lead to higher immersion. Two
factors—transportation into the story world and
mental imagery during reading—in particular showed higher
scores for 1st person as compared to 3rd person pronoun
stories. In contrast, arousal as measured by electrodermal activity seemed
tentatively higher for 3rd person pronoun stories. The two measures
of appreciation were not affected by the pronoun manipulation. Our findings
underscore the importance of perspective for language processing, and
additionally show which aspects of the narrative experience are influenced by a
change in perspective. |