The present study examined whether emotional text content influences cognitive engagement and transportation during listening (Experiment 1) and reading (Experiment 2) of neutral, horror and erotic stories. In Experiment 1, fluctuation in arousal and cognitive engagement were measured by continuous arousal judgments and head movement recordings during story listening. Participants rated experienced transportation and emotional valence after each story. The results showed that emotional texts were more arousing and induced more transportation than neutral stories. There was less head motion overall (...) and a steeper decrease in head motion across time for erotic than neutral or horror stories. In Experiment 2, participants’ head movements and reading times were recorded during reading, and participants rated experienced transportation, arousal, and valence after each text. The results showed that emotional texts were more arousing and induced higher transportation than neutral stories. There was less head motion during reading of erotic than neutral or horror texts. Horror texts were read slower and recalled better than neutral or erotic texts. The present results show that emotional text content impacts cognitive engagement during listening and reading of literary texts and demonstrates the importance of methodological triangulation when examining cognitive engagement. (shrink)

We investigated the impact of situational awe on topic-specific interest and recognition memory for information presented in immersive planetarium films. Adult participants (N = 131) were recruited among science centre visitors who were going to view one of the films shown in the science centre’s planetarium. Participants responded to questions about prior knowledge, topic-specific interest in the film and background information before viewing one of the three planetarium films. After the film, they completed the topic-specific interest scale, epistemically-related emotion scales, (...) situation-specific awe scale, critical thinking disposition scale and a recognition task of the film contents. The results showed that during viewing planetarium films participants experienced awe, but the strength of this emotion varied among films. Additionally, situation-specific awe was strongly associated with another epistemic emotion, namely surprise. As for the recognition task performance, awe decreased error and nonsense detection, and increased false recognition of inferential statements. Finally, awe was found to substantially increase topic-specific interest. These results present evidence that awe has potential to prompt individuals to become more interested in science-related topics. (shrink)

Ruchkin et al.'s view of working memory as activated long-term memory is more compatible with language processing than models such as Baddeley's, but it raises questions about individual differences in working memory and the validity of domain-general capacity estimates. Does it make sense to refer to someone as having low working memory capacity if capacity depends on particular knowledge structures tapped by the task?