Experiment 2, found that a short discourse context preceding the event sentence led readers to adopt an external perspective with the pronoun I
2009
When you and I share perspectives: pronouns modulate perspective taking during narrative comprehension
Key concepts
- data ga action="create_collection
- Personal Construct Theory*
- Attention
- PubMed Abstract
- NCBI
- National Center for Biotechnology Information
- Female
- Pattern Recognition
- Reading*
- data ga category="save_share
- datum ga label="non_favorties_collection
- Narration*
- narrative comprehension
- Humans
- Imagination
- simple event sentence
- Semantics*
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- National Institutes of Health
- Male
- Orientation
- National Library of Medicine
- Tali Ditman
- Interpersonal Relations*
- MEDLINE
- bibliography
- Young Adult
- pmid:19076318
- common assumption
- pronouns modulate perspective
- short discourse context
- Tad T Brunyé
- Comprehension*
- Visual
- external perspective
- Adolescent
- text link
- Holly A Taylor
Scholarcy highlights
- One common assumption is that readers mentally embody an actor's perspective; alternatively, readers might mentally simulate events from an external "onlooker" perspective
- Two experiments examined the role of pronouns in modulating a reader's adopted perspective when comprehending simple event sentences
- Experiment 1 demonstrated that readers embody an actor's perspective when the pronoun you or I is used, but take an external perspective when he is used
- Experiment 2, found that a short discourse context preceding the event sentence led readers to adopt an external perspective with the pronoun I
- These experiments demonstrate that pronoun variation and discourse context mediate the degree of embodiment experienced during narrative comprehension: In all cases, readers mentally simulate objects and events, but they embody an actor's perspective only when directly addressed as the subject of a sentence
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