Simulating a story character's thoughts: Evidence from the directed forgetting task

Readers’ memory representations have been shown to include the sensory details of characters’ movement, dialogue, and navigation through space and time (e.g., Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Gunraj, Drumm-Hewitt, & Klin, 2014; Levine & Klin, 2001; Zwaan, 1996). We ask whether readers also encode the mental experiences of story characters, such as their thoughts and goals. To examine this question, we used a variation of the list-method directed forgetting paradigm (Bjork, 1970), with two word-lists embedded within a narrative. In contrast with the traditional directed forgetting paradigm, it was the story character, rather than the participant, who needed to remember List 1 or forget List 1. If readers take the character's perspective, the character's intention to remember or forget List 1 should influence the reader's intention to remember or forget List 1. This, in turn, should produce the typical pattern of effects for directed forgetting: decreased recall for List 1 (costs) and increased recall for List 2 (benefits) in the Forget condition relative to the Remember condition. The List 2 benefits were found across experiments, even without explicit instructions to forget or remember List 1. However, the List 1 costs were not reliable. Results are discussed within Sahakyan and Delaney's (2003, 2005) two-factor account of directed-forgetting, in which the List 1 and List 2 effects are dissociable. More generally, we conclude that when readers are actively engaged in a story, they may infer and simulate the mental activity of the characters, remembering and forgetting what the story characters remember and forget.