Gander, Pierre, Szita, Kata
ORCID: 0000-0002-3177-9980, Falck, Andreas and Thompson, William Hedley
(2023)
Taking the unreal seriously: Enriching cognitive science with the notion of fictionality.
Frontiers in Psychology, 14
.
ISSN 1664-1078
Abstract
Fictionality and fictional experiences are ubiquitous in people’s everyday lives in the forms of movies, novels, video games, pretense and role playing, and digital technology use. Despite this ubiquity, though, the field of cognitive science has traditionally been dominated by a focus on the real world. Based on the limited understanding from previous research on questions regarding fictional information and the cognitive processes for distinguishing reality from fiction, we argue for the need for a comprehensive and systematic account that reflects on related phenomena, such as narrative comprehension or imagination embedded
into general theories of cognition. This is important as incorporating cognitive processing of fictional events into memory theory reshapes the conceptual map of human memory. In this paper, we highlight future challenges for the cognitive studies of fictionality on conceptual, neurological, and computational levels. Taking on these challenges requires an interdisciplinary approach between fields like developmental psychology, philosophy, and the study of narrative comprehension. Our aim is to build on such interdisciplinarity and provide conclusions on the ways in which new theoretical frameworks of fiction cognition
can aid understanding human behaviors in a wide range of aspects of people’s daily lives, media consumption habits, and digital encounters. Our account also has the potential to inform technological innovations related to training intelligent digital systems to distinguish fact and fiction in the source material.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article (Published) |
|---|---|
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Fictionality, fiction, reality-fiction distinction, pretense, cognitive science |
| Subjects: | Social Sciences > Communication Social Sciences > Social psychology |
| DCU Faculties and Centres: | DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Communications |
| Publisher: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1205891 |
| Official URL: | https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/ar... |
| Copyright Information: | Authors |
| ID Code: | 31839 |
| Deposited On: | 14 Nov 2025 11:06 by Dr Kata Szita . Last Modified 14 Nov 2025 11:06 |
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