| After reviewing arguments about the nature of thematic inferences and problems with previous empirical research, I report the results of a study analyzing readers' judgments about how similar, plausible, and preferable other readers' thematic inferences were. Readers of low, medium, and high reading span read two stories of micro fiction paragraph by paragraph, thinking aloud after each paragraph about the larger point the author might be making. At the end of each story, the participants formulated a theme which they believed captured the overall meaning of the story. The readers then compared all of their statements to those of other readers, choosing between four multiple choice options: (A) This is another way of saying what I said, (B) I prefer this statement to the one I generated, (C) This is a plausible interpretation that I could endorse, and (D) This is not a plausible interpretation. Response times for these judgments were measured. The results showed that (1) readers rated other readers' thematic statements as plausible or not plausible more often than they rated statements to be the same as their own or preferable, (2) most statements received mixed ratings of sameness, preferability, plausibility, and non-plausibility, (3) judgments of preference took reliably longer to make than other judgments, and (4) high span readers endorsed more statements as the same as their own and less statements as non-plausible than medium span readers who appeared to endorse more statements as the same as their own and less statements as non-plausible than low span readers.; Overall, the results strongly support the notion that themes do not reside in texts in any obvious way but are constructed by readers. Additionally, these findings suggest that “personal” meanings far and away exceed consensual meanings. Thus, locating a group of readers who share perceptions and judgments may be more of a challenge than once thought. Also, these results show that working memory ability influences the variability of thematic inferences made; high span readers likely entertain multiple meanings simultaneously before narrowing in on an exclusive interpretation as opposed to low span readers who balance sentence-to-sentence understanding by coming to early conclusions about the theme. |
