Auditory imagery and poetry-elicited emotions: a study on the hard of hearing

Silent reading evokes auditory images of the written text, and there is emerging evidence that these images increase emotional arousal when reading poetry. A novel approach to studying their relevance to poetry-elicited emotions is to explore them in hard of hearing individuals, who may have difficulties generating mental images in this modality. In the present study, we investigated differences in auditory imagery, both as a dispositional trait and as a process that occurs during reading, and the intensity of poetry-elicited emotions between hard of hearing individuals and controls. We also explored whether the effect of hearing loss on arousal can be partially explained by the vividness of the auditory images evoked during reading. For this purpose, participants completed two sessions. First, they filled in a set of questionnaires concerning reading experience and dispositional traits. Second, they read poetry for 30 min, retrospectively rated their emotional responses to the poems and answered questions about socio-affective and cognitive processes during reading. Results showed that, although participants in the hard of hearing group scored significantly lower than controls on every measure of auditory imagery (i.e., trait auditory imagery, auditory imagery for words, and other sounds while reading), their emotions were no less intense. The hard of hearing group also reported lower levels of other dispositional traits (i.e., visual imagery and proneness to fantasizing), but not of any psychological processes during reading. Not much is known about the effects of mental imagery on poetry-elicited emotions, and our findings open a new and promising line of research for exploring their relevance and specificity.