When You and I Share Perspectives: Pronouns Modulate Perspective-Taking During Narrative Comprehension

Abstract

ABSTRACT—Readers mentally simulate the objects and events described in narratives. One common assumption is that readers mentally embody an actor’s perspective; alternatively, readers might mentally simulate events from an external ‘‘onlooker’ ’ perspective. Two experiments examined the role of pronouns in modulating a reader’s adopted perspective when comprehending simple event sentences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that readers em-body an actor’s perspective when the pronoun you or I is used, but take an external perspective when he is used. Experiment 2, however, found that a short discourse con-text preceding the event sentence led readers to adopt an external perspective with the pronoun I. These experi-ments demonstrate that pronoun variation and discourse context mediate the degree of embodiment experienced

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