Autistic Readers of Literary Narrative: A Cognitive Aesthetics Approach

本研究旨在探讨以下问题：成年自闭症读者如何处理文学叙事文本？先前的自闭症研究已经广泛地探索了自闭症个体在理解和产生方面的叙述能力（Broc等人，2021.然而，大多数的研究往往只集中在简单的，很少文学，叙事。一般来说，本研究试图解决以下附属问题：1。与神经型读者相比，自闭症读者在文学叙事加工和欣赏方面有哪些困难和优势？2.文学叙事文本为自闭症读者提供了哪些具体的启示？3.有没有方法可以提高自闭症患者处理和参与文学叙事的能力？4.这项研究产生的见解是否也能使其他神经分歧群体受益？虽然文学批评已经研究了自闭症人物的虚构表现（Rodas，2018），但实证文学研究只关注神经型读者（例如Jacobs，2015）。另一方面，围绕叙事处理的自闭症研究通常依赖于小的、简单的虚构叙事，这些叙事通常由实验者产生，或者从先前的实验中重复使用，以报告自闭症个体的叙事技能（Colle等人，2008年）。研究也主要集中在自闭症在叙事处理中的“缺陷”特征，而不是优势（Broc et al.，2021年）。本研究结合文学研究和认知心理学，运用相关领域的实验研究数据，对自闭症与文学叙事阅读之间的关系进行概念化的探讨。作为其基本原理的一部分，它还将集中于自闭症成年人（在语言或智力方面没有额外的障碍），因为儿童是更经常研究的病例（例如Ferretti等人，2018年）。采用这一基本原理将适合于本研究所考虑的假定类型的自闭症读者，具有基本的读写能力和阅读能力。一个广泛的语料库的叙事文学文本所产生的非自闭症作家将用于这项研究。作为自闭症研究的一项创新，这些文本将涵盖不同的历史和文化时期，从十九世纪和二十世纪的小说到当代小说。在使用这个语料库，我将分析一系列的文学叙事文本的特点，包括，例如，叙事风格，结构和技术方面，和正式的实验。我将把这些特征与各种观察到的特征联系起来，这些特征通常被理解为自闭症个体比其他人更困难，包括心理理论，隐喻语言处理和想象力（Broc et al.，2021年）。我还将探讨成年自闭症读者在处理这些特征方面可能比神经型读者具有优势的可能性，基于自闭症叙事研究的最新建议（轶事证据，见Maróthi，Csigo和Kéri，2019），此外，自闭症研究中更广泛的尝试提供自闭症的积极特征并确定处理优势（Russell et al.，2019).根据这一分析，我将研究文学叙事文本如何适合成人自闭症读者的处理优势，在某种程度上，他们涉及到这些困难和优势。我将考虑文学叙事文本是否可以通过增加叙事技巧和促进自闭症和神经型读者之间更好的社会理解来使成年自闭症读者受益（Chapple等人，2021年）。本研究的另一个目标是检查文学叙事处理中是否存在基于性别的差异，因为目前公认自闭症在女性中可能存在不同的表现（Halloween et al.，（二）

This project will aim to address the following question: how do adult autistic readers process literary narrative texts? Previous autism research has explored extensively the narrative abilities of autistic individuals, in both comprehension and production (Broc et al., 2021. However, much of this research has often focused only on simple, and very rarely literary, narratives.In general, this study seeks to address the following subsidiary questions:1. What difficulties and advantages do autistic readers possess in literary narrative processing and its enjoyment compared to neurotypical readers? 2. What specific affordances do literary narrative texts offer to autistic readers? 3. Are there ways of improving some autistic individuals' ability to process, and overall engage with, literary narratives?4. Can the insights generated from this study also benefit other neurodivergent communities?Whereas literary criticism has examined the fictional representation of characters with autism (Rodas, 2018), empirical literary studies have solely focused on neurotypical readers (e.g. Jacobs, 2015). Autism research surrounding narrative processing, on the other hand, has often relied upon small, simple fictional narratives, often produced by the experimenter, or reused from previous experiments, to report on the narrative skills of autistic individuals (Colle et al., 2008). Studies have also largely focused on 'deficit' characterisations of autism in narrative processing, rather than on advantages (Broc et al., 2021). Working between both literary studies and cognitive psychology, this study will aim to conceptualise the relationship between autism and literary narrative reading, using data generated from experimental work in related areas to support its arguments. As part of its rationale, it will also concentrate on autistic adults (without additional impairments in language or intellectual ability), since children are more frequently studied cases (e.g. Ferretti et al., 2018). Adopting this rationale will be appropriate for the presumed type of autistic reader this study considers, with basic levels of literacy and reading abilities. An extensive corpus of narrative literary texts produced by non-autistic writers will be used for this study. As an innovation in autism research, these texts will cover a diverse range of historical and cultural periods, spanning from nineteenth and twentieth-century fiction to contemporary fiction. In using this corpus, I will analyse a range of literary narrative text features, including, for example, aspects of narrative style, structure, and technique, and formal experimentation. I will relate these features to a variety of observed features typically understood as more difficult for autistic individuals than others, including theory of mind, metaphorical language processing, and imagination (Broc et al., 2021). I will also explore the possibility that adult autistic readers may possess advantages over neurotypical readers in processing these features, based on recent suggestions in autism narrative research (for anecdotal evidence, see Maróthi, Csigó and Kéri, 2019), and furthermore, wider attempts in autism research to provide positive characterisations of autism and identify processing strengths (Russell et al., 2019).Following from this analysis, I will investigate how literary narrative texts can be suited to the processing strengths of adult autistic readers, to the extent that they relate to these difficulties and advantages. I will consider whether literary narrative texts can benefit adult autistic readers by increasing narrative skills and facilitating better social understanding between autism and neurotypical readers (Chapple et al., 2021). An additional goal of this study will be to examine whether there are gender-based differences in literary narrative processing, since it is currently acknowledged that autism may present differently in females (Halladay et al.,2)