From Words to Worlds: Is Mental Simulation a Driver of Individual Differences in Processing, Experiencing, and Liking Stories?

Stories allow people to (vicariously) experience other worlds, but what this subjective experience looks like varies from reader to reader. In this paper, we focus on the cognitive and neural mechanisms that give rise to these differences in experience and preference. We argue that differences in reading skill and in the reading “modes” that a reader has access to might be important predictors, together with factors such as the reader’s propensity for mental simulation. We discuss evidence to suggest that these differences are reflected in behavioural and neural signatures.