2007/12/01 by Sônia Zyngier, Willie van Peer, Jèmeljan Hakemulder · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Aesthetic Perception and Analysis #Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
paper · doi:10.1215/03335372-2007-011
openalex publication_date 2007/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
This article approaches from an empirical perspective the interrelation between foregrounding and complexity in the evaluation of literary texts. For this purpose, a reading experiment is reported. Participants from three cultures (Brazil, Egypt, and the Netherlands) read three texts of different degrees of complexity and evaluated them on a number of variables. Subsequently, they re-read and evaluated the texts once more. The hypothesis was that complex texts would be rated higher on a second than on a first reading; the opposite was predicted for the text with the lowest complexity. Results confirmed this hypothesis for only one group of participants, which raises questions about the nature of a “reading culture.”