Exploring absorbing reading experiences: Developing and validating a self-report scale to measure story world absorption

Kuijpers, Moniek M.; Hakemulder, Frank; Tan, Ed S.; Doicaru, Miruna M.

doi:10.1075/ssol.4.1.05kui

Article published In: Scientific Study of Literature
Vol. 4:1 (2014) ► pp.89–122

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download PDF

Exploring absorbing reading experiences

Developing and validating a self-report scale to measure story world absorption

Moniek M. Kuijpers | Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University

Frank Hakemulder | Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam

Ed S. Tan

Miruna M. Doicaru

Published online: 22 September 2014

https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.4.1.05kui

References (31)

Balakrishnan, B., & Sundar, S.S. (2011). Where am I? How can I get there? Impact of navigability and narrative transportation on spatial presence. Human–Computer Interaction, 26(3), 161–204.

Bilandzic, H., & Busselle, R.W. (2008). Transportation and transportability in the cultivation of genre-consistent attitudes and estimates. Journal of Communication, 58(3), 508–529.

Brewer, W.F., & Lichtenstein, E.H. (1982). Stories are to entertain: A structural-affect theory of stories. Journal of Pragmatics, 6 (5-6), 473–486.

Busselle, R., & Bilandzic, H. (2009). Measuring narrative engagement. Media Psychology, 12(4), 321–347.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). The flow experience and its significance for human psychology, Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, J. (2001). Defining identification: A theoretical look at the identification of audiences with media characters. Mass Communication and Society, 4(3), 245–264.

Duchan, J.F., Bruder, G.A., & Hewitt, L.E. (1995). Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Hillsdale.

Field, A. (2005) Discovering Statistics using SPSS. Second Edition.Sage Publications, London.

Gerrig, R.J. (1993). Experiencing narrative worlds: On the psychological activities of reading. Yale University Press.

Green, M.C., & Brock, T.C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721.

Green, M.C., Brock, T.C. & Kaufman, G.F. (2004) Understanding media enjoyment: The role of transportation into narrative worlds. Communication Theory, 41, 311–327.

Green, M.C., Kass, S., Carrey, J., Herzig, B., Feeney, R., & Sabini, J. (2008). Transportation across media: Repeated exposure to print and film. Media Psychology, 11(4), 512–539.

Hakemulder, J.F. (2004). Foregrounding and its effect on readers. Discourse Processes, 38(2), 26.

Hall, A.E., & Bracken, C.C. (2011). “I really liked that movie”: Testing the relationship between trait empathy, transportation, perceived realism, and movie enjoyment. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 23(2), 90.

Hall, A., & Zwarun, L. (2012). Challenging entertainment: Enjoyment, transportation, and need for cognition in relation to fictional films viewed online. Mass Communication and Society, 15(3), 384–406.

Knobloch, S., Patzig, G., Mende, A.M., & Hastall, M. (2004). Affective news effects of discourse structure in narratives on suspense, curiosity, and enjoyment while reading news and novels. Communication Research, 31(3), 259–287.

Kuijpers, M.M. & Miall, D.S. (2011). Bodily Involvement in Literary Reading: An Experimental Study of Readers’ Bodily Experiences during Reading. In F. Hakemulder (Eds.), De Stralende Lezer. Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek naar de Invloed van het Lezen (pp. 160–174).Delft: Eburon, IGEL.

Lee, K.M. (2004). Presence, explicated. Communication Theory, 14(1), 27–50.

Miall, D.S., & Kuiken, D. (1995). Aspects of literary response: A new questionnaire. Research in the Teaching of English, 29(1), 37–58.

Nabi, R.L., & Krcmar, M. (2004). Conceptualizing media enjoyment as attitude: Implications for mass media effects research. Communication Theory, 14(4), 288–310.

Nell, V. (1988). Lost in a book: The psychology of reading for pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Oliver, M.B. & Bartsch, A. (2010) Appreciation as audience response: Exploring entertainment gratifications beyond hedonism. Human Communication Research, 361, 53–81.

Ravaja, N. (2004). Contributions of Psychophysiology to Media Research: Review and Recommendations. Media Psychology, 61, 193–235.

Segal, E.M. (1995). Narrative comprehension and the role of deictic shift theory. Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective, 3–17.

Tal-Or, N., & Cohen, J. (2010). Understanding audience involvement: Conceptualizing and manipulating identification and transportation. Poetics, 38(4), 402–418.

Tamborini, R., Bowman, N.D., Eden, A., Grizzard, M., & Organ, A. (2010). Defining media enjoyment as the satisfaction of intrinsic needs. Journal of Communication, 60(4), 758–777.

Tan, E.S., & Fasting, B.T. (1996). Emotion and the structure of narrative film: Film as an emotion machine. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences (“absorption”), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83(3), 268.

Vorderer, P., Wulff, H.J., & Friedrichsen, M. (1996). Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations Lawrence Erlbaum.

Wolf, W. (2004). Aesthetic illusion as an effect of fiction. Style-FayetteVille, 38(3), 325.

Zwaan, R.A. (2003). The immersed experiencer: Toward an embodied theory of language comprehension. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 441, 35–62.

Cited by (117)

Cited by 117 other publications

Order by:

Arnavas, Francesca

2025. Mind Wandering and Water Metaphors: Towards a Reconceptualisation of Immersion and Fictional Worlds. Humanities 14:9 ► pp. 179 ff.

Barrett, Alex, Nuodi Zhang & Shiyao Wei

2025. The Virtual Reality in Your Head: How Immersion and Mental Imagery Are Connected to Knowledge Retention. Educational Psychology Review 37:1

Currie, Nicola, Charlotte Webber, Katherine Wilkinson, Christina Clark, Gemma Moss & Sarah McGeown

2025. How Does Reading Fiction Support Adolescents’ Wellbeing? A Qualitative Study Examining Positive Affect, Connection and Personal Growth. Reading Psychology 46:7 ► pp. 654 ff.

de Lima, Alessandro Rego, Diana Carvalho & Tânia de Jesus Vilela da Rocha

2025. HyperCube4x: immersive reading using HyperBook. Universal Access in the Information Society 24:4 ► pp. 3389 ff.

Douglas, Shawn Timothy

2025. Developing the Narrating Identity Questionnaire: A measure of beneficial self-integration and change. New Ideas in Psychology 78 ► pp. 101165 ff.

Iverson, Kelly R. & Michael K. Scullin

2025. Psychology and Performance: Revisiting Rhoads’ “Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Temple Studies”. Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 55:3 ► pp. 165 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek M., Massimo Lusetti, Lina Ruh, Tina Ternes & Johanna Vogelsanger

2025. Absorption in German Online Book Reviews. Presenting the German-Language AbsORB Metadata Corpus and Annotation Guidelines. Journal of Open Humanities Data 11

Loi, Cristina

2025. Is fiction a remedy for our wish to live many lives? Testing a popular assumption among contemporary readers. Poetics 111 ► pp. 102018 ff.

Mathiesen, Signe Lund, Amanda Grenier, Walter Wittich, Mahadeo Sukhai & Björn Herrmann

2025. Narrative engagement in story listening: The challenge of age and vision loss. Journal of Aging Studies 75 ► pp. 101355 ff.

Mézière, Diane, Johanna K. Kaakinen, Emilia Ranta, Karin Kukkonen, Jonathan Smallwood & Jaana Simola

2025. Do eye movements reflect readers’ thoughts during reading? Evidence from multidimensional experience sampling and eye movements. Consciousness and Cognition 134 ► pp. 103918 ff.

Petley, Lauren, Sarah Jane Gascoyne & Myleen Hoffman

2025. Engaging Stories for the Study of Attention and Audition (ESSAA): A Database of Engagement Scores for Narrative Stimuli. Auditory Perception & Cognition 8:2 ► pp. 157 ff.

Schneider, Ralf

2025. 133Multiple perspectives in the novel and storyworld possible selves: An alternative approach to narrative engagement. In Storyworld Possible Selves and Narrative Intersubjectivity, ► pp. 133 ff.

Schwerin, Julia, Jan Lenhart & Tobias Richter

2025. Short-Term Effects of Fiction on Social-Cognitive Skills: The Roles of Literariness, Language Familiarity, and Narrative Experience. Scientific Study of Literature 14:1 ► pp. 4 ff.

van Mulukom, Valerie

2025. Keep It Real: Feelings of “Realness” of Event Imaginings are Associated with Ease of Imagining and Absorption for Episodic and Fantastical Imagination. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 45:2 ► pp. 193 ff.

Chen, Chen (Crystal), Xiaohan Hu & Jacob Fisher

2024. What is ‘Being There’? An ontology of the immersive experience. Annals of the International Communication Association 48:4 ► pp. 391 ff.

Ghasseminejad, Melina & María-Ángeles Martínez

2024. Secondary storyworld possible selves: narrative response and cultural (un)predictability. Frontiers of Narrative Studies 10:1 ► pp. 105 ff.

Guerberof-Arenas, Ana & Antonio Toral

2024. To be or not to be. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 36:2 ► pp. 215 ff.

Hakemulder, Frank & Anne Mangen

2024. Literary Reading on Paper and Screens: Associations Between Reading Habits and Preferences and Experiencing Meaningfulness. Reading Research Quarterly 59:1 ► pp. 57 ff.

Hall, Julia R., Ben Deery, Emma Sciberras, Margaret Kern & Jon Quach

2024. How are we measuring resilience in children? A systematic review. Mental Health & Prevention 35 ► pp. 200351 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek M., Massimo Lusetti, Piroska Lendvai & Simone Rebora

2024. Validation of the Story World Absorption Scale through annotation of online book reviews. Journal of Cultural Analytics 9:1

Kunzová, Nikola, Adam Štěpánek, Daniel Echeverri, Danielle K. Langlois & Simone Kriglstein

2024. Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, ► pp. 36 ff.

Ramachers, Stefanie T.M.R. & Roel M. Willems

2024. Reading short stories in a foreign language: Is it as pleasurable as in the L1? Absorption and appreciation of short stories in Dutch secondary school students learning German as a foreign language. System 120 ► pp. 103211 ff.

Speed, Laura J., Lynn S. Eekhof & Marloes Mak

2024. The role of visual imagery in story reading: Evidence from aphantasia. Consciousness and Cognition 118 ► pp. 103645 ff.

Sánchez Carrasco, Patricia, Marjolein Van Hoften & Gert-Jan Schoenmakers

2024. What I Can Do with the Right Version of You: The Impact of Narrative Perspective on Reader Immersion, and How (in)Formal Address Pronouns Influence Immersion Reports. Languages 9:8 ► pp. 265 ff.

Tosi, Giorgia, Noemi Bonali & Daniele Romano

2024. Finding oneself in someone else’s shoes: The role of perspective in literary texts. Consciousness and Cognition 125 ► pp. 103767 ff.

Wang, Jing, Qiqi Ye, Zhiqiang Shuai, Peifeng Wang, Yujie Wang & Changqing Lin

2024. The influence of transportation, social norms, cultural identity, and affective disposition in transnational media enjoyment. Frontiers in Psychology 15

Williams, Rosina & Sebastian P. Suggate

2024. Latent Profiles of Visual Imagery: Aphantasics, Mid-Range Imagers, and Hyperphantasics Experience Reading Differently. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 44:2 ► pp. 168 ff.

Zermiani, Francesca, Prajit Dhar, Florian Strohm, Sibylle Baumbach, Andreas Bulling & Maria Wirzberger

2024. Individual differences in visuo-spatial working memory capacity and prior knowledge during interrupted reading. Frontiers in Cognition 3

Ballenghein, Ugo, Johanna K. Kaakinen, Geoffrey Tissier & Thierry Baccino

2023. Fluctuation in cognitive engagement during listening and reading of erotica and horror stories. Cognition and Emotion 37:5 ► pp. 874 ff.

Gerrig, Richard J.

2023. Processes and products of readers’ journeys to narrative worlds. Discourse Processes 60:4-5 ► pp. 226 ff.

Jin, Jian & Siyun Liu

2023. Shifts in Narrative Perspectives Consume Attentional Resources and Facilitate Reading Engagement. Scientific Studies of Reading 27:5 ► pp. 393 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek, Piroska Lendvai, Massimo Lusetti, Simone Rebora, Lina Ruh, Jonathan Tadres, Tina Ternes & Johanna Vogelsanger

2023. Absorption in Online Reviews of Books: Presenting the English-Language AbsORB Metadata Corpus and Annotation Guidelines. Journal of Open Humanities Data 9

Lei, Anqi, Roel M. Willems & Lynn S. Eekhof

2023. Emotions, fast and slow: processing of emotion words is affected by individual differences in need for affect and narrative absorption. Cognition and Emotion 37:5 ► pp. 997 ff.

Loi, Cristina, Frank Hakemulder, Moniek Kuijpers & Gerhard Lauer

2023. On how Fiction Impacts the Self-Concept: Transformative Reading Experiences and Storyworld Possible Selves. Scientific Study of Literature 12:1 ► pp. 44 ff.

Mansworth, Megan

2023. The restricted possible worlds of depression: A stylistic analysis of Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing using a possible worlds framework. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 32:1 ► pp. 28 ff.

Tchernev, John M., James Collier & Zheng Wang

2023. There and Back Again? Exploring the Real-Time Cognitive Journey of Narrative Transportation. Communication Research 50:3 ► pp. 312 ff.

Thompson, Jacqueline, Ben Teasdale, Evert van Emde Boas, Felix Budelmann, Sophie Duncan, Laurie Maguire & Robin Dunbar

2023. Does believing something to be fiction allow a form of moral licencing or a ‘fictive pass’ in understanding others’ actions?. Frontiers in Psychology 14

Tian, Yuan, Olivia Fialho, Shisheng Liu & Michael Burke

2023. Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? Effects of Foregrounded Multimodal and Narrative Features. Scientific Study of Literature 12:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

van de Ven, Inge

2023. ‘Gonna get you, baby!’ A qualitative-empirical study of attentional modulation in reading a short story. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 32:4 ► pp. 458 ff.

van de Ven, Inge

2024. Attentional modulation in literary reading: A theoretical‐empirical framework. Orbis Litterarum 79:2 ► pp. 184 ff.

van de Ven, Inge, Frank Hakemulder & Anne Mangen

2023. ‘TL;DR’ (Too Long; Didn’t Read)? Cognitive Patience as a Mode of Reading: Exploring Concentration and Perseverance. Scientific Study of Literature 12:1 ► pp. 68 ff.

Armeni, Kristijan, Umut Güçlü, Marcel van Gerven & Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen

2022. A 10-hour within-participant magnetoencephalography narrative dataset to test models of language comprehension. Scientific Data 9:1

Benini, Sergio, Mattia Savardi, Katalin Balint, Andras Balint Kovacs & Alberto Signoroni

2022. On the Influence of Shot Scale on Film Mood and Narrative Engagement in Film Viewers. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 13:2 ► pp. 592 ff.

Black, Jessica E., Brian M. Ruedinger & Jennifer L. Barnes

2022. The Imaginative Engagement Scale: Development of an Instrument to Assess Cognitive Elements of Engaging with Fiction. Media Psychology 25:4 ► pp. 583 ff.

Busselle, Rick & Tanja Vierrether

2022. Linking Epistemic Monitoring to Perceived Realism: the Impact of Story-World Inconsistency on Realism and Engagement. Media Psychology 25:5 ► pp. 689 ff.

Eekhof, Lynn S., Kobie van Krieken & Roel M. Willems

2022. Reading about minds: The social-cognitive potential of narratives. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 29:5 ► pp. 1703 ff.

Giovanelli, Marcello

2022. Cognitive Grammar and Readers’ Perceived Sense of Closeness: A Study of Responses to Mary Borden’s ‘Belgium’. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:3 ► pp. 407 ff.

Harris, Paul L.

2022. Children's Imagination,

Irsik, Vanessa C., Ingrid S. Johnsrude & Björn Herrmann

2022. Neural Activity during Story Listening Is Synchronized across Individuals Despite Acoustic Masking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 34:6 ► pp. 933 ff.

Kuzmičová, Anežka, Markéta Supa & Martin Nekola

2022. Children’s perspectives on being absorbed when reading fiction: A Q methodology study. Frontiers in Psychology 13

Mak, Marloes, Myrthe Faber & Roel M. Willems

2022. Different routes to liking: how readers arrive at narrative evaluations. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 7:1

Mak, Marloes, Myrthe Faber & Roel M. Willems

2023. Different kinds of simulation during literary reading: Insights from a combined fMRI and eye-tracking study. Cortex 162 ► pp. 115 ff.

Price, Hazel

2022. The year’s work in stylistics 2021. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:4 ► pp. 519 ff.

Raeburn, Gideon, Martin Welton & Laurissa Tokarchuk

2022. Developing a play-anywhere handheld AR storytelling app using remote data collection. Frontiers in Computer Science 4

Esther Aarts, Agnes Akkerman, Mareike Altgassen, Ronald Bartels, Debby Beckers, Kirsten Bevelander, Erik Bijleveld, Esmeralda Blaney Davidson, Annemarie Boleij, Janita Bralten, Toon Cillessen, Jurgen Claassen, Roshan Cools, Ineke Cornelissen, Martin Dresler, Thijs Eijsvogels, Myrthe Faber, Guillén Fernández, Bernd Figner, Matthias Fritsche, Sascha Füllbrunn, Surya Gayet, Marleen M. H. J. van Gelder, Marcel van Gerven, Sabine Geurts, Corina U. Greven, Martine Groefsema, Koen Haak, Peter Hagoort, Yvonne Hartman, Beatrice van der Heijden, Erno Hermans, Vivian Heuvelmans, Florian Hintz, Janet den Hollander, Anneloes M. Hulsman, Sebastian Idesis, Martin Jaeger, Esther Janse, Joost Janzing, Roy P. C. Kessels, Johan C. Karremans, Willemien de Kleijn, Marieke Klein, Floris Klumpers, Nils Kohn, Hubert Korzilius, Bas Krahmer, Floris de Lange, Judith van Leeuwen, Huaiyu Liu, Maartje Luijten, Peggy Manders, Katerina Manevska, José P. Marques, Jon Matthews, James M. McQueen, Pieter Medendorp, René Melis, Antje Meyer, Joukje Oosterman, Lucy Overbeek, Marius Peelen, Jean Popma, Geert Postma, Karin Roelofs, Yvonne G. T. van Rossenberg, Gabi Schaap, Paul Scheepers, Luc Selen, Marianne Starren, Dorine W. Swinkels, Indira Tendolkar, Dick Thijssen, Hans Timmerman, Rayyan Tutunji, Anil Tuladhar, Harm Veling, Maaike Verhagen, Jasper Verkroost, Jacqueline Vink, Vivian Vriezekolk, Janna Vrijsen, Jana Vyrastekova, Selina van der Wal, Roel Willems, Arthur Willemsen & Fulvio D’Acquisto

2021. Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. PLOS ONE 16:12 ► pp. e0260952 ff.

Avramova, Yana R., Nathalie Dens & Patrick De Pelsmacker

2021. Brand placement across media: The interaction of placement modality and frequency in film versus text. Journal of Business Research 128 ► pp. 20 ff.

Eekhof, Lynn S., Moniek M. Kuijpers, Myrthe Faber, Xin Gao, Marloes Mak, Emiel van den Hoven & Roel M. Willems

2021. Lost in a Story, Detached from the Words. Discourse Processes 58:7 ► pp. 595 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek M.

2021. Postscript. In Style and Reader Response [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 36], ► pp. 217 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek M.

2021. Exploring the dimensional relationships of story world absorption. Scientific Study of Literature 11:2 ► pp. 266 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek M.

2022. Bodily involvement in readers’ online book reviews: applying Text World Theory to examine absorption in unprompted reader response. Journal of Literary Semantics 51:2 ► pp. 111 ff.

Kuiken, Don, Shawn Douglas & Moniek Kuijpers

2021. Openness to experience, absorption-like states, and the aesthetic, explanatory, and pragmatic effects of literary reading. Scientific Study of Literature 11:2 ► pp. 148 ff.

Pianzola, Federico

2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption questionnaires: a scoping review. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 11 ff.

Pianzola, Federico

2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption questionnaires: a scoping review. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 11 ff.

Pianzola, Federico, Giuseppe Riva, Karin Kukkonen & Fabrizia Mantovani

2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption: an interdisciplinary theoretical exploration with a new spatiotemporal integrated model based on predictive processing. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 28 ff.

Pianzola, Federico, Giuseppe Riva, Karin Kukkonen & Fabrizia Mantovani

2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption: an interdisciplinary theoretical exploration with a new spatiotemporal integrated model based on predictive processing. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 28 ff.

Rebora, Simone, Peter Boot, Federico Pianzola, Brigitte Gasser, J Berenike Herrmann, Maria Kraxenberger, Moniek M Kuijpers, Gerhard Lauer, Piroska Lendvai, Thomas C Messerli & Pasqualina Sorrentino

2021. Digital humanities and digital social reading. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36:Supplement_2 ► pp. ii230 ff.

Rosa, Lotta-Sofia La & Aku-Ville Lehtimäki

2021. Absorbing narratives and Motivation to Read. Scientific Study of Literature 11:1 ► pp. 74 ff.

Samur, Dalya, Mattie Tops, Ringailė Slapšinskaitė & Sander L. Koole

2021. Getting lost in a story: how narrative engagement emerges from narrative perspective and individual differences in alexithymia. Cognition and Emotion 35:3 ► pp. 576 ff.

Vroegh, Thijs, Sandro L. Wiesmann, Sebastian Henschke & Elke B. Lange

2021. Manual motor reaction while being absorbed into popular music. Consciousness and Cognition 89 ► pp. 103088 ff.

Alber, Jan, Jessica Jumpertz & Axel Mayer

2020. How professional readers process unnatural narrators. Scientific Study of Literature 10:2 ► pp. 193 ff.

Boot, Peter & Marijn Koolen

2020. Captivating, splendid or instructive?. Scientific Study of Literature 10:1 ► pp. 35 ff.

Deane, Paul

2020. Building and Justifying Interpretations of Texts: A Key Practice in the English Language Arts. ETS Research Report Series 2020:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Herrmann, Björn & Ingrid S. Johnsrude

2020. Absorption and Enjoyment During Listening to Acoustically Masked Stories. Trends in Hearing 24

Karam, Khaled Mostafa & Helmy Elfiel

2020. An experimental study of the effect of close reading versus casual reading of social drama on the stimulation of the cognitive capacity of empathy. Scientific Study of Literature 10:1 ► pp. 4 ff.

Lin, Xi

2020. The Engaged Spectator: Reading BL Novels in Contemporary China. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 13:2 ► pp. 233 ff.

Mak, Marloes, Clarissa de Vries, Roel M. Willems, Rolf Zwaan & Valentina Bambini

2020. The Influence of Mental Imagery Instructions and Personality Characteristics on Reading Experiences. Collabra: Psychology 6:1

Poerio, Giulia & Peter Totterdell

2020. The Effect of Fiction on the Well-Being of Older Adults: A Longitudinal RCT Intervention Study Using Audiobooks. Psychosocial Intervention 29:1 ► pp. 29 ff.

Shastina , Elena , Stephanie Jentgens, Olga Shatunova , Anatoly Borisov & Galina Bozhkova

2020. Role of Literary Pedagogy in Modern Education of Preschool and Primary School Children . Space and Culture, India 8:1 ► pp. 234 ff.

Usée, Franziska, Arthur M. Jacobs & Jana Lüdtke

2020. From Abstract Symbols to Emotional (In-)Sights: An Eye Tracking Study on the Effects of Emotional Vignettes and Pictures. Frontiers in Psychology 11

Bell, Alice, Astrid Ensslin, Isabelle van der Bom & Jen Smith

2019. A reader response method not just for ‘you’. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 28:3 ► pp. 241 ff.

CHUNG-FAT-YIM, ASHLEY, ELENA CILENTO, EWELINA PIOTROWSKA & RAYMOND A. MAR

2019. Are stories just as transporting when not in your native tongue?. Language and Cognition 11:2 ► pp. 285 ff.

Mak, Marloes & Roel M. Willems

2019. Mental simulation during literary reading: Individual differences revealed with eye-tracking. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 34:4 ► pp. 511 ff.

Mak, Marloes & Roel M. Willems

2021. Eyelit: Eye Movement and Reader Response Data During Literary Reading. Journal of Open Humanities Data 7

Mangen, Anne, Gérard Olivier & Jean-Luc Velay

2019. Comparing Comprehension of a Long Text Read in Print Book and on Kindle: Where in the Text and When in the Story?. Frontiers in Psychology 10

Pianzola, Federico, Katalin Bálint & Jessica Weller

2019. Virtual reality as a tool for promoting reading via enhanced narrative absorption and empathy. Scientific Study of Literature 9:2 ► pp. 163 ff.

Stockwell, Peter

2019. Immersion and emergence in children’s literature. In Experiencing Fictional Worlds [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 32], ► pp. 15 ff.

Carpenter, Jordan M., Melanie C. Green & Kaitlin Fitzgerald

2018. Mind-reading motivation. Scientific Study of Literature 8:2 ► pp. 211 ff.

de Hoop, Helen & Kim Schreurs

2018. On the Interpretive Effects of Double Perspective in Genitive Constructions. In Pronouns in Literature, ► pp. 113 ff.

Eekhof, Lynn S., Anita Eerland, Roel M. Willems, Monica Gonzalez-Marquez & Rolf Zwaan

2018. Readers’ Insensitivity to Tense Revealed: No Differences in Mental Simulation During Reading of Present and Past Tense Stories. Collabra: Psychology 4:1

Keen, Suzanne

2018. Empathy Studies. In A Companion to Literary Theory, ► pp. 126 ff.

Mangen, Anne, Anne Charlotte Begnum, Anežka Kuzmičová, Kersti Nilsson, Mette Steenberg & Hildegunn Støle

2018. Empathy and literary style. Orbis Litterarum 73:6 ► pp. 471 ff.

Starr, G. Gabrielle

2018. Cognitive Literary Criticism. In A Companion to Literary Theory, ► pp. 408 ff.

Thompson, Jacqueline M., Ben Teasdale, Sophie Duncan, Evert van Emde Boas, Felix Budelmann, Laurie Maguire & Robin I. M. Dunbar

2018. Individual Differences in Transportation into Narrative Drama. Review of General Psychology 22:2 ► pp. 210 ff.

Trompenaars, Thijs

2018. Empathy for the inanimate. Linguistics in the Netherlands 35 ► pp. 125 ff.

Vries, Clarissa de, W. Gudrun Reijnierse & Roel M. Willems

2018. Eye movements reveal readers’ sensitivity to deliberate metaphors during narrative reading. Scientific Study of Literature 8:1 ► pp. 135 ff.

Bilandzic, Helena & Rick Busselle

2017. Beyond metaphors and traditions. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 11 ff.

Bálint, Katalin, Moniek M. Kuijpers & Miruna M. Doicaru

2017. The effect of suspense structure on felt suspense and narrative absorption in literature and film. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 177 ff.

Calarco, Navona, Katrina Fong, Marina Rain & Raymond A. Mar

2017. Absorption in narrative fiction and its possible impact on social abilities. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 293 ff.

Dixon, Peter & Marisa Bortolussi

2017. Elaboration, emotion, and transportation. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 199 ff.

Hartung, Franziska, Peter Withers, Peter Hagoort & Roel M. Willems

2017. When Fiction Is Just as Real as Fact: No Differences in Reading Behavior between Stories Believed to be Based on True or Fictional Events. Frontiers in Psychology 8

Jacobs, Arthur M. & Jana Lüdtke

2017. Immersion into narrative and poetic worlds. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 69 ff.

Kuijpers, Moniek M., Frank Hakemulder, Katalin Balint, Miruna Doicaru & Ed Tan

2017. Towards a new understanding of absorbing reading experiences. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 29 ff.

Kuiken, Don & Shawn Douglas

2017. Forms of absorption that facilitate the aesthetic and explanatory effects of literary reading. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 217 ff.

Kuzmičová, Anežka, Anne Mangen, Hildegunn Støle & Anne Charlotte Begnum

2017. Literature and readers’ empathy: A qualitative text manipulation study. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 26:2 ► pp. 137 ff.

Mangen, Anne & Adriaan van der Weel

2017. Why don’t we read hypertext novels?. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 23:2 ► pp. 166 ff.

Menninghaus, Winfried, Valentin Wagner, Julian Hanich, Eugen Wassiliwizky, Thomas Jacobsen & Stefan Koelsch

2017. The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40

Tan, Ed, Miruna M. Doicaru, Frank Hakemulder, Katalin Balint & Moniek M. Kuijpers

2017. Into film. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 97 ff.

Auracher, Jan & Hildegard Bosch

2016. Showing with words. Scientific Study of Literature 6:2 ► pp. 208 ff.

Bálint, Katalin, Frank Hakemulder, Moniek M. Kuijpers, Miruna M. Doicaru & Ed S. Tan

2016. Reconceptualizing foregrounding. Scientific Study of Literature 6:2 ► pp. 176 ff.

Gerrig, Richard J., Kelsey A. Bagelmann & Micah L. Mumper

2016. On the Origins of Readers' Outcome Preferences. Discourse Processes 53:8 ► pp. 603 ff.

Jacobs, Arthur M.

2016. The scientific study of literary experience and neuro-behavioral responses to literature. Scientific Study of Literature 6:1 ► pp. 164 ff.

Jacobs, Arthur M., Jana Lüdtke, Arash Aryani, Burkhard Meyer-Sickendieck & Markus Conrad

2016. Mood-empathic and aesthetic responses in poetry reception. Scientific Study of Literature 6:1 ► pp. 87 ff.

Knoop, Christine A., Valentin Wagner, Thomas Jacobsen & Winfried Menninghaus

2016. Mapping the aesthetic space of literature “from below”. Poetics 56 ► pp. 35 ff.

Kuzmičová, Anežka

2016. Does it Matter Where You Read? Situating Narrative in Physical Environment. Communication Theory 26:3 ► pp. 290 ff.

van den Hoven, Emiel, Franziska Hartung, Michael Burke & Roel M. Willems

2016. Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Style During Literary Reading: Insights from Eye-Tracking. Collabra 2:1

Montoro, Rocío

2015. The Year’s Work in stylistics 2014. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 24:4 ► pp. 355 ff.

[no author supplied]

2024. Narrative transportation: How stories shape how we see ourselves and the world [Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 70], ► pp. 1 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.