Psychological experience of reading literary texts from the cognitive perspective

This paper studies psychological experience of reading narrative literary texts from the cognitive perspective. Vicarious experience through literary texts as construction of a virtual human world, generally understood as situation model in the cognitive process of text comprehension, can be grasped as readers mental simulation on the backgrounds, scenes, and the actions of characters. Readers, however, not only simulate the outside world in the texts, but also recognize the inner states of the characters such as motivation, intention, and emotion, which makes readers reading experience psychological reality. This empathic experience can be explained as readers retrieving personal experience from the long-term memory as direct resources for inferencing the overall situation in the texts. In that cognitive text comprehension is closely connected with human learning by both updating and reconstructing memory, mental simulation through narrative literary texts ultimately leads to readers personal growth by deeper understanding on themselves and broadening their horizons. Finally this paper suggests two educational implications on reading in foreign language education; the importance of empathy through reading literary texts in communicative situation, and facilitation of foreign language learning by connecting readers own experience with it