Reading Feelings: Does Reading Fiction Improve Children's Empathy and Pro-social skills?

同情他人的能力--分享、理解和体验对他人情感体验的关心--可以说是一个有凝聚力的社会中最重要的技能之一。它为亲社会行为提供了基础，也有助于促进社会正义。最近的研究表明，成年人的同理心会受到一项重要活动的影响：阅读小说。然而，很少有研究集中于儿童时期的阅读和同理心，这将是拟议工作方案的重点。在成年人中，人们对阅读小说的好处，特别是文学小说，增加同理心的兴趣很大。最近的研究表明，热衷于阅读文学小说(但不是其他体裁)的成年人在移情测试中表现得更好。短期干预的效果更具争议性，但大多数研究表明，同理心略有但可靠的增长。这些实验研究表明，阅读小说与移情反应有因果关系，一些作者认为，沉浸在文学中可以对读者如何看待自己以及他们如何回应他人(即他们的亲社会行为)产生持久的影响。还没有对儿童进行类似的研究。我们的目标是通过纵向和实验(训练)研究来评估阅读小说对儿童同理心的影响。同理心被认为有三个组成部分：情感/情感同理心，即一个人与他人的感受产生共鸣；认知性同理心或观点采纳力，即一个人运用理性来了解他人的感受；以及亲社会动机(有时被认为是“舒适的意图”)。另一个问题是动机或意图是否会导致行动(亲社会行为)。同理心的这三个方面在经验上是可以分开的，但在文献中并不总是明确区分它们。因此，拟议工作的一个新的贡献是考虑移情的三个方面，以及每一个方面与阅读的关系。我们将讨论的另一个问题是认知移情如何与心智理论相关。我们还将探索另一个已知的影响成年人对文本的移情反应的因素：读者接触文本或通过文本传递的能力：称为传递性。尤其是小说，需要读者在阅读的同时积极参与，并全神贯注于文本。更大的传神倾向可以帮助读者更强烈地体验角色的情感和视角。可移植性及其与阅读体验和同理心的关系在儿童中还没有被探索过。我们建议测量儿童在阅读时进入叙事的倾向，并探索这种倾向如何影响阅读和移情反应之间的关系。当前提议的另一个新颖方面是我们计划从相反的方向探索因果关系：从移情到阅读理解。有人认为，增加共鸣有助于更好地理解人物的心理状态，(也许是通过增加阅读的数量和乐趣)可以提高阅读理解能力。这一假设在很大程度上还没有被探索，但我们将在我们的纵向研究中解决它。拟议的研究具有巨大的影响潜力。最近，在英国，人们对阅读和儿童同理心之间的关系越来越感兴趣。非营利性组织EmpathyLab因其与作家和出版商的合作而吸引了相当多的关注，该组织利用学校的书籍和故事作为培养同理心和积极社会关系的媒介。我们与EmpathyLab的联系将提供机会传播我们的发现(在他们的年度移情日活动中)，并将拨款中的发现转化为对学校的影响。

The ability to empathise with others - to share, understand, and experience concern for other people's emotional experiences - is arguably one of the most important skills in a cohesive society. It provides the underpinnings for prosocial behaviour and can also help in the promotion of social justice. Recent research has shown that, in adults, empathy can be influenced by one important activity: reading fiction. However, few studies have focused on reading and empathy in childhood, which will be the focus of the proposed programme of work.In adult populations, there has been substantial interest in the benefits of reading fiction and, in particular literary fiction, in increasing empathy. Recent studies have shown that adults who are avid readers of literary fiction (but not other genres) perform better on tests of empathy. The effects of short-term interventions are more controversial, but most studies show small but reliable increases in empathy. These experimental studies suggest that reading fiction is causally related to empathic response, and some authors suggest that immersion in literature can have long-lasting effects on how readers think about themselves and how they respond to others (i.e., their prosocial behaviour). Comparable studies have not been conducted with children. Our aim is to use both longitudinal and experimental (training) studies to evaluate the effects of reading fiction on empathy in childhood.Empathy is considered to have three components: emotional/affective empathy, where a person resonates with someone else's feelings; cognitive empathy or perspective taking, where a person applies reason to work out how someone else feels; and prosocial motivation (sometimes identified with 'intention to comfort'). A further issue is whether the motivation or intention leads to action (prosocial behaviour). These three aspects of empathy are empirically separable, but they are not always clearly differentiated in the literature. Thus, a novel contribution of the proposed work is to consider the three aspects of empathy, and the relation of each to reading. Another question we will address is how cognitive empathy is related to theory of mind.We will also explore another factor known to influence empathic response to text in adults: the reader's ability to become engaged with, or transported by, text: termed transportability. Fiction, in particular, requires readers to actively engage whilst reading and to become absorbed in the text. A greater tendency to become transported can help the reader experience the emotions and perspective of the characters more intensely. Transportability, and its relation to reading experience and empathy, has not been explored in children. We propose to measure children's propensity to become transported into a narrative when reading, and to explore how this propensity influences the relation between reading and empathic response.Another novel aspect of the current proposal is our plan to explore causal relations in the reverse direction: from empathy to reading comprehension. It has been suggested that increased empathy leads to better understanding of characters' mental states and (perhaps through increased amount of and enjoyment of reading) can improve reading comprehension. This hypothesis is largely unexplored, but we will address it in our longitudinal study.The proposed research has substantial potential for impact. Recently in the UK there has been increased interest in the relation between reading and empathy in children. The not-for-profit organisation, EmpathyLab, is attracting considerable attention for its work with authors and publishers, using books and stories in schools as a vehicle for fostering empathy and positive social relationships. Our links with EmpathyLab will provide opportunities to disseminate our findings (at their annual Empathy Day events), and also to translate findings from the grant into impacts in schools.