Does a single session of reading literary fiction prime enhanced mentalising performance? Four replication experiments of Kidd and Castano (2013)

ABSTRACT

Prior experiments indicated that reading literary fiction improves mentalising performance relative to reading popular fiction, non-fiction, or not reading. However, the experiments had relatively small sample sizes and hence low statistical power. To address this limitation, the present authors conducted four high-powered replication experiments (combined N = 1006) testing the causal impact of reading literary fiction on mentalising. Relative to the original research, the present experiments used the same literary texts in the reading manipulation; the same mentalising task; and the same kind of participant samples. Moreover, one experiment was pre-registered as a direct replication. In none of the experiments did reading literary fiction have any effect on mentalising relative to control conditions. The results replicate earlier findings that familiarity with fiction is positively correlated with mentalising. Taken together, the present findings call into question whether a single session of reading fiction leads to immediate improvements in mentalising.

KEYWORDS:

• Reading
• literary fiction
• mentalising
• literature
• theory of mind

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The full texts for all the stories/excerpts used in all experiments are available by request. Please contact the correspondance author for a copy.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council [ERC-2011-StG_20101124] to Sander L. Koole and a Research Talent Grant from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [NWO-406-14-097] to Dalya Samur and Sander L. Koole.