Supplementary material from Parallelisms and deviations: two fundamentals of an aesthetics of poetic diction

Poetic diction routinely involves two complementary classes of features: (i) parallelisms, i.e. repetitive patterns (rhyme, metre, alliteration, etc.) that enhance the predictability of upcoming words and (ii) poetic deviations that challenge standard expectations/predictions regarding regular word form and order. The present study investigated how these two prediction-modulating fundamentals of poetic diction affect the cognitive processing and aesthetic evaluation of poems, humoristic couplets and proverbs. We developed quantitative measures of these two groups of text features. Across the three text genres, higher deviation scores reduced both comprehensibility and aesthetic liking whereas higher parallelism scores enhanced these. The positive effects of parallelism are significantly stronger than the concurrent negative effects of the features of deviation. These results are in accord with the hypothesis that art reception involves an interplay of prediction errors and prediction error minimization, with the latter paving the way for processing fluency and aesthetic liking.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art and affect in the predictive mind’.

诗歌措辞通常包含两类互补的特征：(i) 平行结构（parallelism），即通过重复模式（押韵、格律、头韵等）提升后续词汇可预测性的手法；(ii) 诗歌变异手法，即挑战常规词汇形式与语序的标准预期或预测的特征。本研究探讨了诗歌措辞的这两类调节预测的核心特征，如何影响诗歌、诙谐对联与谚语的认知加工与审美评价。我们针对这两类文本特征开发了量化测量方法。在三类文本体裁中，较高的变异特征得分会同时降低文本的可理解性与审美好感度，而较高的平行结构得分则能提升这两项指标。平行结构的正向效应显著强于变异特征带来的负向效应。本研究结果与“艺术接受涉及预测误差（prediction error）与预测误差最小化（prediction error minimization）的交互作用，而后者为加工流畅性与审美好感度奠定基础”的假说相符。本文隶属于“预测性思维中的艺术与情感”专题栏目。