Situational Interest in Literary Text

This study examined relationships among text characteristics, situational interest, two measures of text understanding, and personal responses when reading a literary text. A factor analysis of ratings made after reading revealed six interrelated text characteristics. Of these, suspense, coherence and thematic complexity explained 54% of the variance in interest. Additional analyses found that situational interest was unrelated to a multiple choice test of main ideas; but was related to personal responses and holistic interpretations of the text. These results suggest that multiple aspects of literary texts are interesting to readers, and that interest is related to personal engagement variables, even when it is not related to the comprehension of main ideas.