>Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies—and that makes a writer excellent at creating multilayered characters and situations. Not much research has been conducted on the theory of mind (our ability to realize that our minds are different than other people’s minds and that their emotions are different from ours) that fosters this skill, but recent experiments revealed that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective theory of mind (understanding others’ emotions) and cognitive theory of mind (understanding others’ thinking and state of being) compared with reading nonfiction, popular fiction, or nothing at all. Specifically, these results showed that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances theory of mind, and, more broadly, that theory of mind may be influenced greater by engagement with true works of art. In other words, literary fiction provokes thought, contemplation, expansion, and integration. Reading literary fiction stimulates cognition beyond the brain functions related to reading, say, magazine articles, interviews, or most online nonfiction reporting
http://qz.com/714987/what-you-read-matters-more-than-you-might-think/
Discuss, /lit/.
i have been saying this for ages. I think it's vitally important for the socially impaired or high functioning autistics to be forced to read and evaluate literary fiction at a young age as a part of therapy and etc.
My theory is that the inclination to read is an evolved coping mechanism to being an autist, almost like if men with micropenises were drawn naturally to finger-banging manuals. Therefore this board.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814029243
Nice article.
>>8270598
>Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial
Stopped reading there.
>implying others have a mental state
can't prove it
>>8270712
got any good finger-banging manuals? ples help desperate
there are no good reasons to read literature other than enjoying doing so. it won't improve your life in any other way.
>>8271478
I agree with your first sentence but not with your second.
>>8270598
>Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill
Cumming for Gadot