Taking the unreal seriously: enriching cognitive science with the notion of fictionality

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

Pierre Gander¹  William Hedley Thompson²  Andreas Falck³  Kata Szita⁴ 

[1] Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden;Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden;Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden;Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, ADAPT Centre of Excellence for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland;

关键词: fictionality;    fiction;    reality-fiction distinction;    pretense;    cognitive science;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1205891

 received in 2023-04-14, accepted in 2023-09-08,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Fictionality and fictional experiences are ubiquitous in people’s everyday lives in the forms of movies, novels, video games, pretense and role playing, and digital technology use. Despite this ubiquity, though, the field of cognitive science has traditionally been dominated by a focus on the real world. Based on the limited understanding from previous research on questions regarding fictional information and the cognitive processes for distinguishing reality from fiction, we argue for the need for a comprehensive and systematic account that reflects on related phenomena, such as narrative comprehension or imagination embedded into general theories of cognition. This is important as incorporating cognitive processing of fictional events into memory theory reshapes the conceptual map of human memory. In this paper, we highlight future challenges for the cognitive studies of fictionality on conceptual, neurological, and computational levels. Taking on these challenges requires an interdisciplinary approach between fields like developmental psychology, philosophy, and the study of narrative comprehension. Our aim is to build on such interdisciplinarity and provide conclusions on the ways in which new theoretical frameworks of fiction cognition can aid understanding human behaviors in a wide range of aspects of people’s daily lives, media consumption habits, and digital encounters. Our account also has the potential to inform technological innovations related to training intelligent digital systems to distinguish fact and fiction in the source material.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Gander, Szita, Falck and Thompson.