Poetics, Perception, Disinterestedness: An Online Notebook

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Alliteration and Memory Performance

Sweet Silent Thought: Alliteration and Resonance in Poetry Comprehension (2008) by R Brooke Lea, et. al.:

We used current theories of language comprehension as a framework for understanding how alliteration affects comprehension processes. Across three experiments, alliterative cues reactivated readers' memories for previous information when it was phonologically similar to the cue. These effects were obtained when participants read aloud and when they read silently, and with poetry and prose. The results support everyday intuitions about the effects of poetry and aesthetics, and explain the nature of such effects. These findings extend the scope of general memory models by indicating their capacity to explain the influence of nonsemantic discourse features.


Discussion by Dave Munger here.

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