THE AESTHETIC EFFECTS OF LITERARY READING AND IMPACTFUL · PDF fileTHE AESTHETIC EFFECTS OF LITERARY READING AND ... Blanchot’s. The Instant of My Death, and Levi’s

THE AESTHETIC EFFECTS OF LITERARY READING AND IMPACTFUL DREAMS:

SUBLIME DISQUIETUDE ANDSUBLIME ENTHRALLMENT

DON KUIKEN

UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The anatomy of an interdisciplinary research project. For some in this diverse audience, it will require tolerance for some novel concepts and procedures—but hopefully no more so than will be required for other presentations.

LEVEL 1: THE POETICS OF BASIC REM DREAMS

METAPHORICITYDURING REM DREAMING

• Dreams are “a series of incomplete metaphors connected by a story-line” (Jones, 1987, p. 88)

• Metaphors are one of the “principal tropes” (with metonymy [synecdoche] and irony (Hall, 1953, p. 173; States, 1988)

• Dreaming may be the “product of metaphors, metonymies, ironies, and conceptual blends” (Domhoff, 2003, p. 33; Lakoff, 1993)

• “I was sleeping in the bathtub” (Foulkes, 1970)• The equivalent of a metaphoric noun-noun compound (a “bathtub

bed”) or an implicit metaphoric assertion (“My bed is a bathtub”)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Not retrospectively and interpretively “constructed” metaphoricity but rather a semantic process that is at the heart of dream formation. Current research describes the meaning of noun-noun compounds as dependent upon distinctly semantic relations, rather than merely associative ones (Mather, Jones, & Estes, 2014). The kinds of semantic relations that characterize these noun-noun compounds actually provide a richer vocabulary for a poetics of dreaming than a trope-centred account does. Moreover, an analysis of literary foregrounding provided by Mukarovský (1976) some years ago indicates that such non-figurative fusions and juxtapositions are at the heart of the language required to develop a general poetics—with an oneiric poetics as a particular instantiation.

OPEN ATTENTION DURING REM DREAMING

• The standard “deficit” interpretation: • REM dreaming reflects activation of the default mode network (DMN),

including deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the consequent absence of reality-testing “executive” functions

• An alternative “capacity” interpretation: • Deactivation of the DLPFC and activation of the medial prefrontal

cortex (MPFC) indicates (1) reduced supervisory attention with (2) increased salience monitoring (Menon & Uddin, 2010)

• This attentional pattern during the REM sensory blockade also occurs during “absorbed” literary reading (Kuiken & Douglas, in press)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The neo-positivist “romance” with lucid dreaming (Voss et al., 2014) is superimposed on a traditional deficit interpretation of REM dreaming. It merely creates a rational/irrational—and manipulble—dichotomy, rather than articulating the “rationality” of poesy (ala Coleridge). This integrated “openness” attentional pattern is evident during musical improvisation (e.g., Liu, Braun and colleagues, 2012). Although the phenomenal world varies (the dreamed phenomenal world, the lyrically “sung” phenomenal world), or the poetically “said” phenomenal world), the underlying attentional pattern is arguably the same.

RECURSIVE EXPLICATION DURING REM DREAMING

• Image “discontinuities” are the most common form of REM dream anomaly (Revonsuo & Tarkko, 2002)

• Such discontinuities accompany phasic events (e.g., E-PIPs, MEMAs) (e.g., Ogilvie, Hunt, Sawicki, & Samahalskyi, 1982) and indicate tonic activation of the orienting response during REM (Morrison, 1989)

• Adjustments to working memory as though, in response to an [implicit] question “What is this?”, the [implicit] answer is, “Oh, not [the expected] X [“aphids on the leaves of my tomatoes”], but rather [the unexpected] Y [“spiders on my hands”]

• Mukarovský’s (1976) analysis of literary foregrounding also identified such non-figurative transitions across “resonant” sound patterns

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Anomalous transformations retain ontological integrity (Rittenhouse, Stickgold, & Hobson, 1994), e.g., an image of “aphids on my tomatoes” becomes an image of “spiders on my hands”.

LEVEL I1: THE POETICS OF IMPACTFUL DREAMS

RECURSIVE EXPLICATION ACROSS EPISODES OF IMPACTFUL DREAMS

• Impactful dreams are those that affect the dreamer’s thoughts and feelings after awakening (“carry-over” effects)

• Impactful dreams with a recursive narrative structure are more likely than dreams without that structure to conclude with self-reported “inexpressible realizations” (Kuiken, 2012)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

And inexpressible realizations are “low level” aesthetic responses (rather like pleasure/interest, evocative imagery, chills). So this requires elaboration to justify the claim that aesthetic outcomes of impactful dreams involve poignant epistemic issues (as in a Kantian conception of sublime feeling).

CONTRASTING TYPES OF IMPACTFUL DREAMS

• The empirical articulation of three types of impactful dreams: transcendent dreams, existential dreams, and nightmares (Kuiken & Sikora, 1993; Busink & Kuiken, 1995)

NIGHTMARES: FEATURE PROFILE

• Emotions and feelings: fear

• Motives, concerns: harm avoidance

• Movement style: vigorous activity

• Success/failure: lack of goal achievement

• Sensory phenomena: auditory anomalies

• Dream transitions: physical metamorphoses

• Dream endings: intense affect

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Nightmares = threat and harmavoidance during the dream and “nightmare distress” afterwards (not discussed here)

TRANSCENDENT DREAMS: FEATURE PROFILE

• Emotions and feelings: ecstasy

• Motives, concerns: magical success

• Movement style: vigorous activity

• Success/failure: goal achievement

• Sensory phenomena: extraordinary light

• Dream transitions: shifts in perspective


Presenter

Presentation Notes

Not simply a matter of positive or negative affect, but rather of a profile of more-or-less co-occurng attributes. More like identifying the complex polythetic structure of a species that a few simplifying dimensions (as implemented also in numerous DSM categories, e.g., PTSD). Transcendent dreams = Jung’s “big” dreams and Hunt’s archetypal dreams, with spiritual aftereffects (Kuiken, Lee, Singh, & Eng, 2006; Lee & Kuiken, 2015)

EXISTENTIAL DREAMS: FEATURE PROFILE

• Emotions and feelings: sadness

• Motives, concerns: separation

• Movement style: ineffectuality(fatigue)

• Success/failure: lack of goal achievement

• Sensory phenomena: light/dark contrast

• Dream transitions: affective shifts


Presenter

Presentation Notes

Existential dreams = Hunt’s self-state dreams(?), States’ dreams with tragic “magnitude”

CONTRASTING EFFECTS OF IMPACTFUL DREAMS

• One of these types (existential dreams) is followed by an altered sense of the dreamer’s “existential” concerns; another of these types (transcendent dreams) is followed by an altered sense of the dreamer’s “spiritual” concerns (Kuiken et al., 2006)

• Both loosely entail “aesthetic” complexity (Kuiken et al., 2006)

AFTEREFFECTS OF IMPACTFUL DREAMS: SUBLIME FEELING

• Not sublime feeling as a particular kind of emotion (e.g., melancholy, elevation)

• Not sublime feeling as response to particular stimulus properties (e.g., natural spectacle)

• But rather, sublime feeling as the poignant combination of• An inexpressible recognition/realization

• A “no-longer-having,” within sublime disquietude; a “not-yet-having” within sublime enthrallment (both are forms of “unpleasure”)

• A “shift” toward self-perceptual depth (an epistemic “pleasure”)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Sublime feeling The Sublime, but not: Its “subjective” pole: conceived as particular kinds of emotional response (e.g., melancholy/nostalgic; inspired/thrilled; e.g., Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder; Zentner, Grandjean, Scherer, 2008) Its “objective” pole: conceived as particular kinds of stimulus properties (e.g., extraordinary magnitude, threat-contemplated-in-safety; e.g., Grand Canyon; Konečni, 2011) Subjective/objective “co-constitution”: 1. Sublime feeling involves epistemic bivalence: “unpleasure” in the “inexpressibility” of a recognition/realization, along with the “pleasure” of “being moved” closer to that recognition/realization (a “felt shift”; Gendlin, 1997) This is the distinctive poignancy of sublime feeling; it is not generic affective bivalence. 2. The “unpleasure” of sublime feeling is experienced as “absence” (Duncker [1941], either no-longer-having what one once almost had (sublime disquietude) or not-yet-having what one might yet have (sublime enthrallment). The edgy absence is the “loss” (of what one once almost had) in sublime disquietude; discord, disquietude about what echoes from “what was” The edgy absence is the “unattainability” (of what one might yet have) in sublime enthrallment; reverence, enthrallment with what calls from “beyond” 3. Sublime feeling is self-implicating: that which is lost or inaccessible becomes realized as “what this is like” not just for me but in general (existential inclusiveness)

EMPIRICAL INDICES OF SUBLIME FEELING

• The Experiencing Questionnaire (EQ; Kuiken, Campbell, & Sopčák, 2012)

• Sublime Disquietude: The interactive combination of Inexpressible Realizations, Self-perceptual Depth, Discord/Disquiet

• Sublime Enthrallment: The interactive combination of Inexpressible Realizations, Self-perceptual Depth, Wonder/Reverence

Aesthetic Outcomes Sample Items

Sublime Disquietude

Self-perceptual Depth

I felt sensitive to aspects of my life that I usually ignore

Inexpressible Realizations

What seemed clear to me also seemed beyond words

Perceived Discord/Disquiet

Something in my experience seemed irreversibly ruined/I felt profoundly ill-at-ease

Sublime Enthrallment

Self-perceptual Depth

I felt sensitive to aspects of my life that I usually ignore

Inexpressible Realizations

What seemed clear to me also seemed beyond words

Wonder/Reverence I felt deeply astonished/I seemed to touch something sacred

BACKGROUND TO THESE INDICES

• Two previous studies of literary reading (Kuiken, Campbell, & Sopčák, 2012) found that:

• Sublime Disquietude was greater following reading of Celan’s Death Fugue, Owen’s Exposure, Blanchot’s The Instant of My Death, and Levi’s The Black Stars

• Sublime Enthrallment was greater following reading of Shelley’s Mont Blanc, Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight, Rilke’s First Duino Elegy, and Eliot’s Little Gidding

• Are the carry-over effects of some dreams comparable to reading Death Fugue, etc.?

• Are the carry-over effects of some dreams comparable to reading Mont Blanc, etc.?

STUDY 1: RESEARCH DESIGN (LEE & KUIKEN, 2015)

• 158 participants who remembered at least one dream/month (including at least one impactful dream)

• Participants recorded a dream that was as impactful as their most impactful dream within the preceding month

• By completing the 26-item Impactful Dreams Questionnaire (IDQ; Kuiken, 2009), which enabled classification of nightmares (n=38), existential dreams (n=47), transcendent dreams (n=35), and mundane dreams (n=38)

• And by completing a dream-specific version of the Experiencing Questionnaire (EQ)

DREAM TYPE DIFFERENCES: EFFECTS ON SUBLIME FEELING (STUDY 1)

Mundanedreams(n = 38)

Transcenddreams(n = 35)

Nightmares(n = 38)

Existentialdreams(n = 47)

Sublime Enthrallment 1.37c 2.23a 1.53c 1.77b

Sublime Disquietude 1.46b 2.38a 2.02b 2.46a

abc Means with different superscripts (within rows) differ significantly from each other (p < .05; LSD)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

For sublime enthrallment, the clearest contrasts are with mundane dreams, but also with nightmares For sublime disquietude, the clearest contrasts are with mundane dreams, but also with nightmares

STUDY 2: RESEARCH DESIGN (KUIKEN & HARTMANN, IN PREP)

• 215 participants who remembered at least one dream/month (including at least one impactful dream)

• Participants recorded a dream that was as impactful as their most impactful dream within the preceding month

• By completing the 26-item Impactful Dreams Questionnaire (IDQ; Kuiken, 2009), which enabled classification of nightmares (n=38), existential dreams (n=47), transcendent dreams (n=35), and mundane dreams (n=38)

• And by completing a dream-specific version of the Experiencing Questionnaire (EQ)

DREAM TYPE DIFFERENCES: EFFECTS ON SUBLIME FEELING (STUDY 2)

Mundanedreams(n = 63)

Transcenddreams(n = 31)

Nightmares(n = 50)

Existentialdreams(n = 64)

Sublime Enthrallment 1.23b 1.39a 1.23b 1.31a

Sublime Disquietude 1.25c 1.34b 1.39b 1.53a

abc Means with different superscripts (within rows) differ significantly from each other (p < .05; LSD)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

For sublime enthrallment, the clearest contrasts are with mundane dreams, but also with nightmares For sublime disquietude, the clearest contrasts are with mundane dreams, but also with nightmares

THE CURRENT STATE OF THIS DREAMY ART

• Articulation of a basic form of open reflection during REM dreaming (and during a broad spectrum of engagements with literary and fantasy narratives)

• Articulation of a basic form of metaphoricity during REM dreaming (and during encounters with highly foregrounded literary and fantasy narratives)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Grounded in studies of REM dream “mind wandering” (default mode network) Grounded in studies REM dream “anomalies” (metaphor comprehension)

THE CURRENT STATE OF THIS DREAMY ART

• Articulation of a form of cross-episodic metaphoricity during the enactive expressiveness of impactful dreams (and the “expressive enactment” that comprises one form of “absorbing” engagement with literary fiction)

• Articulation of two forms of sublime feeling that emerge from existential and transcendent dreams (and from one form of especially “absorbing” engagement with contrasting genres of literary fiction)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Working toward articulation of cross-episodic transformations (the source of inexpressible realizations and self-perceptual depth Working toward articulation of expressive character of existential and transcendent dreams (the sources of two types of sublime feeling)

THANK YOU!

Don Kuiken

Department of Psychology

P217 Biological Sciences Bldg.

University of Alberta

Edmonton, AB T6G 0C6

CANADA

[email protected]

THANK YOU!

AESTHETIC EFFECTS OF “ABSORBED” READING: SUBLIME FEELING

TWO TYPES OF DEEPLY ENGAGED READING

• Expressive Enactment involves:• Pre-enactive Empathy, Peripersonal Space, Self-implicating Givenness

• A form of open, recursive, expression-centered explication (Kuiken, Miall, & Sikora, 2004; Sikora, Kuiken, & Miall, 2011)

• Integrative Comprehension involves:• Cognitive Perspective-taking, Extrapersonal Space, Narrative Realism

• A form of open, elaborative, inference-centered interpretation (situation model; Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; Zwaan, 2014)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Some reading experiences are “transporting” (Gerrig, 1993), “immersive” (Jacobs, 2015), “engaging” (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008), or “absorbing” (Kuijpers et al., 2014). There are several ways to become “lost in a book.” Two phenomenological studies (Sikora, Kuiken, & Miall, 2011; Fiahlo & Kuiken, in preparation) The Absorption-like States Questionnaire (ASQ; Kuiken & Douglas, in press) Our current stance: Three types of absorption-like states. The first two are of particular interest because they involve contrasting forms of Empathy: Pre-enactive (“basic”) Empathy vs. Cognitive Perspective-taking Personal Space: Peripersonal Space vs. Extra-personal Space Verisimilitude: Self-implicating Givenness vs. Conduct/Affective Realism A deictic shift to the world of the text is usually conceived as movement toward the narrator’s or a character’s frame of reference (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009, p. 323; Kuijpers et al., 2014, p. 93), although the reader’s demeanor within such an altered frame may involve either: Pre-enactive empathy with subtle self-other fusion and subtle differentiation (metaphors of personal identification) (Cohen, 2012) Cognitive empathy with responsive bidirectional interaction between separate intentionalities (Przyrembel et al., 2012) A deictic shift to the world of the text may make that world either “close” or “distant.” Peri-personal space is a self-relevant frame of reference that integrates sensorimotor perception of recognizable objects within bodily reach. Such proximal self-object relations are sensed through covert activation of the sensorimotor correspondences that make those objects seem potentially manipulated (through movement, touch, and gesture; Klatzky, 1998; Stern, 2010). Extra-personal space is a scene-relevant frame of reference that integrates visuospatial perception of the relative locations of recognizable objects (Goodale & Milner, 2004). Such distal object-object relations are sensed through covert activation of the cross-modal correspondences that make the scene seem potentially navigated. A deictic shift to the world of the text may be Self-implicating (although metaphorically so) or “world implicating.”

Latent Variables (with Miniscales) Sample Item

Expressive Enactment Self-implicating Givenness Remembering experiences in my own life helped me to sense what the character was going through

Peri-personal Space I could almost feel what it would be like to move or change position in relation to the things (objects, characters) in the story world

Pre-enactive Empathy For a moment I felt like I “was” the character described there

Integrative Comprehension Realistic Conduct/Affective Realism This character’s actions seemed similar to what I observe people doing in “real” life/The character’s feelings, attitudes, and concerns seemed life-like

Cognitive Perspective-taking I could understand events in the story from the perspective of each different character

Extra-personal Space I could see (in my mind’s eye) the same setting (or environment) that was “there” for a character to see

STUDY 1: RESEARCH DESIGN (KUIKEN & DOUGLAS, IN PRESS)

• 365 participants were asked to read an excerpt from the novella On Chesil Beach (McEwan, 2008).

• After reading, participants were asked to • Write recursively and expressively about their experience of a

pivotal (preselected) passage

• Describe their reflections using (1) a preliminary version of the Absorption-like States Questionnnaire (ASQ; Kuiken & Douglas, in press) and (2) selected items from the EQ (Kuiken, Campbell, & Sopčák, 2012)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The excerpt describes the protagonist’s response to termination of a marital relationship amidst both partners’ reluctance to speak honestly with each other

Model

Expressive Enact

Coefficient

Integrat Compreh

Coefficientᵡ2 TLI CFI NFI

RMSEA

RMSEALow/Hi

Aesthetic Outcomes

Sublime Disquietude

.90 -.03 192.8 .922 .941 .923 .089 .076/.102

BeingMoved

.91 -.17 181.0 .925 .943 .923 .085 .072/.098

Explanatory Outcomes

Narrator Intelligibility

.25 .52 212.4 .906 .929 .910 .094 .082/.108

CausalExplanation

.14 .50 189.6 .915 .936 .915 .088 .075/.101

PlotCoherence

-.12 .85 209.3 .908 .931 .911 .094 .081/.107

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

• Two studies replicating the preceding asymmetric pattern for absorption-like states (Douglas & Kuiken, in preparation; Kuijpers, Douglas, Kuiken, & Menninghaus, in preparation)

• Two studies indicating that expressive enactment facilitates metaphor comprehension following expressive enactment but not following integrative comprehension (Douglas & Kuiken, in preparation)

• An ongoing study involving the assessment of metaphor comprehension following existential dreams (as well as transcendent dreams and nightmares)

Don Kuiken

Department of Psychology

P217 Biological Sciences Bldg.

University of Alberta

Edmonton, AB T6G 0C6

CANADA

[email protected]

Documents

THE AESTHETIC EFFECTS OF LITERARY READING AND IMPACTFUL · PDF fileTHE AESTHETIC EFFECTS OF LITERARY READING AND ... Blanchot’s. The Instant of My Death, and Levi’s