To Teach and Delight: The Varieties of Learning From Fiction

IF 3.6 2区 心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
J. Best
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

It is well known that people who read fiction have many reasons for doing so. But perhaps one of the most understudied reasons people have for reading fiction is their belief that reading will result in their acquisition of certain forms of knowledge or skill. Such expectations have long been fostered by literary theorists, critics, authors, and readers who have asserted that reading may indeed be among the best ways to learn particular forms of knowledge. Modern psychological research has borne out many of these claims. For example, readers of fiction learn cognitive skills such as mentalizing or theory of mind. Reading fiction is also associated with greater empathic skills, especially among avid or lifelong readers. For readers who are emotionally transported into the fictional world they are reading about, powerful emotional truths are often discovered that may subsequently help readers build, or change, their identities. Fiction readers acquire factual information about places or people they may not have any other access to. But reading fiction also presents opportunities to acquire inaccurate factual information that may diminish access to previously learned accurate information. If readers are provided with inaccurate information that is encoded, they have opportunities to make faulty inferences, whose invalidity the reader is often incapable of detecting. Readers of fiction use schematic world knowledge to navigate fictional texts. But if the border between fiction and reality becomes blurred, as might be the case of avid readers of fiction, there is a risk that they may export schematic knowledge from the world of fiction to the everyday world, where it may not be applicable. These and other findings suggest that the varieties of learning from fiction form a complex, nuanced pattern deserving of greater attention by researchers.
寓教于乐:小说学习的多样性
众所周知,阅读小说的人有很多理由这样做。但也许人们阅读小说的最未被充分研究的原因之一是他们相信阅读会使他们获得某些形式的知识或技能。长期以来,文学理论家、评论家、作家和读者一直在培养这种期望,他们断言阅读可能确实是学习特定知识形式的最佳方式之一。现代心理学研究已经证实了其中的许多说法。例如,小说的读者学习认知技能,如心理化或心理理论。阅读小说也与更高的移情能力有关,尤其是在狂热或终身读者中。对于那些在情感上被带入他们所阅读的虚构世界的读者来说,他们经常会发现强大的情感真相,这些真相可能会帮助读者建立或改变他们的身份。小说读者获得了他们可能无法接触到的地方或人的真实信息。但阅读小说也有机会获得不准确的真实信息,这可能会减少他们获得以前学到的准确信息的机会。如果向读者提供了不准确的编码信息,他们就有机会做出错误的推断,而读者往往无法检测到这些推断的无效性。小说读者使用图解世界知识来浏览小说文本。但是,如果小说和现实之间的边界变得模糊,就像狂热的小说读者一样,他们可能会将图式知识从小说世界输出到日常世界,而在日常世界中,图式知识可能不适用。这些和其他发现表明,从小说中学习的各种方式形成了一种复杂而微妙的模式,值得研究人员更多关注。
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来源期刊
Review of General Psychology
Review of General Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
7.60
自引率
4.80%
发文量
26
期刊介绍: Review of General Psychology seeks to publish innovative theoretical, conceptual, or methodological articles that cross-cut the traditional subdisciplines of psychology. The journal contains articles that advance theory, evaluate and integrate research literatures, provide a new historical analysis, or discuss new methodological developments in psychology as a whole. Review of General Psychology is especially interested in articles that bridge gaps between subdisciplines in psychology as well as related fields or that focus on topics that transcend traditional subdisciplinary boundaries.
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