Inner Experience While Reading Fiction: a Descriptive Experience Sampling Exploration Vincent Peter Brouwers University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected]
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UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones December 2015 Inner Experience while Reading Fiction: A Descriptive Experience Sampling Exploration Vincent Peter Brouwers University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Psychology Commons Repository Citation Brouwers, Vincent Peter, "Inner Experience while Reading Fiction: A Descriptive Experience Sampling Exploration" (2015). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2521. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/2521 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Scholarship@UNLV. It has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INNER EXPERIENCE WHILE READING FICTION: A DESCRIPTIVE EXPERIENCE SAMPLING EXPLORATION by Vincent Peter Brouwers Bachelor of Arts in Psychology Loyola Marymount University 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts – Psychology Department of Psychology College of Liberal Arts The Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas August 2015 Thesis Approval The Graduate College The University of Nevada, Las Vegas June 8, 2015 This thesis prepared by Vincent P. Brouwers entitled Inner Experience while Reading Fiction: An Inner Experience Sampling Exploration is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts – Psychology Department of Psychology Russell T. Hurlburt, Ph.D. Kathryn Hausbeck Korgan, Ph.D. Examination Committee Chair Graduate College Interim Dean Christopher L. Heavey, Ph.D. Examination Committee Member Stephen D. Benning, Ph.D. Examination Committee Member Douglas A. Unger, M.F.A. Graduate College Faculty Representative ii ABSTRACT Reading is ubiquitous. In Western culture, childhood education places a strong emphasis on acquiring the ability to read. Whereas many studies have examined the cognitive processes underlying reading ability, no previous studies have used a high- fidelity method of sampling inner experience to examine the direct, momentary inner experience while reading. The current study used the Descriptive Experience Sampling Method (DES) to explore the inner experience of 17 undergraduates, who had been trained in DES, while reading classical short stories. We found that participants while reading often innerly saw a visual depiction of the story, though the congruency of these depictions with the actual story on the page varied across participants and across moments. We also found that words were often present in participants’ experience, though they were rarely, if ever, present as simply innerly voicing the text as it was read. We further observed that experiential styles while reading varied across participants, including the degree to which imagery or words were present while reading fiction. Implications and limitations of these findings were discussed. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................1 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................4 Apprehending Experience ...................................................................................4 Methods of Sampling Experience .....................................................................15 Reading Phenomena..........................................................................................40 CHAPTER 3 METHOD ........................................................................................48 Participants ........................................................................................................50 Measures ...........................................................................................................51 Equipment/Apparatus .......................................................................................53 Procedure ..........................................................................................................54 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS ........................................................................................61 Phenomena While Reading Fiction ..................................................................63 Inner Seeing Experiences ..............................................................................64 Experiences Involving Words .......................................................................88 Other Experiences .........................................................................................99 Individual Differences in Fiction Reading Styles ...........................................110 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION ................................................................................117 Summary of Findings .....................................................................................118 Implications....................................................................................................119 Limitations .....................................................................................................120 APPENDIX A ......................................................................................................123 APPENDIX B ......................................................................................................182 APPENDIX C ......................................................................................................186 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................191 CURRICULUM VITAE ......................................................................................204 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Demographic Data .............................................................................................186 Table 2: STS Scores and NIEQ Scores ............................................................................187 Table 3: Reading Phenomena and BLRQ ........................................................................188 Table 4: % of 5FP in Natural Environment DES .............................................................189 Table 5: % of 5FP while Reading Fiction .......................................................................190 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION According to a report by the Central Intelligence Agency (2013), 99% of Americans are literate. This compares to an 84.1% world literacy rate, which reflects variability in the cultural emphasis on reading. For many industrialized nations, the literacy rate exceeds 99%, whereas for underdeveloped countries such as those in sub- Saharan Africa, rates often fall well below 50% of the population. In spite of these exceptions, a majority of people in this world read. These readers read for their jobs, their schoolwork, and in their everyday lives. A vast amount of worldwide information is shared through text media. Whether individuals read functionally or for leisure, reading is a vital part of the culture of most nations. Because of its popularity and usefulness, studying the phenomenology of reading may be important. Many researchers investigate the perceptual and semantic processes involved in reading (e.g. Arya & Feathers, 2012; Catinelli et al., 2013); however, little attention has been paid to individuals’ inner experience as they engage the process of reading. This may be the case because studying inner experience is difficult, time consuming, and a subject of theoretical debate (e.g. Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel, 2007; Caracciolo & Hurlburt, 2013). In response, researchers have developed various methods to obtain data about participants’ inner experience. Each of these methods has particular advantages and limitations, and as with any research method, must be sufficient for answering the research question. Therefore, a researcher interested in the phenomenology of reading must select a method that is well suited for pursuing that aim. 1 A method that hopes to capture a high fidelity experiential view of reading must satisfy at least three conditions. First, the method itself must exert minimal influence over the naturalistic experience of reading. Second, the reader must be able to engage the reading process in a relatively natural environment. And third, the participant must understand the process of attending to, and then describing, randomly signaled moments of inner experience. Before exploring inner experience as it occurs during reading, it is important to define inner experience and to determine the necessary characteristics of a high-fidelity experience sampling method. Hurlburt defines inner experience as “thoughts, feelings, sensations, anything that ‘appears before the footlights of consciousness’” (Hurlburt, 2011b). In other words, inner experience is a person’s directly experienced contents of consciousness at a given moment in time. Inner experience has long been a topic of interest and debate in the study of psychology. To a researcher, studying experience can provide insight into how an individual perceives and interprets the internal and external environment. A