@inproceedings{neis-etal-2023-analysis,
    title = "An Analysis of Reader Engagement in Literary Fiction through Eye Tracking and Linguistic Features",
    author = "Neis, Rose  and
      De Langis, Karin  and
      Kim, Zae Myung  and
      Kang, Dongyeop",
    editor = "Akoury, Nader  and
      Clark, Elizabeth  and
      Iyyer, Mohit  and
      Chaturvedi, Snigdha  and
      Brahman, Faeze  and
      Chandu, Khyathi",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Narrative Understanding",
    month = jul,
    year = "2023",
    address = "Toronto, Canada",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2023.wnu-1.13",
    doi = "10.18653/v1/2023.wnu-1.13",
    pages = "73--81",
    abstract = "Capturing readers{'} engagement in fiction is a challenging but important aspect of narrative understanding. In this study, we collected 23 readers{'} reactions to 2 short stories through eye tracking, sentence-level annotations, and an overall engagement scale survey. We analyzed the significance of various qualities of the text in predicting how engaging a reader is likely to find it. As enjoyment of fiction is highly contextual, we also investigated individual differences in our data. Furthering our understanding of what captivates readers in fiction will help better inform models used in creative narrative generation and collaborative writing tools.",
}

Capturing readers{'} engagement in fiction is a challenging but important aspect of narrative understanding. In this study, we collected 23 readers{'} reactions to 2 short stories through eye tracking, sentence-level annotations, and an overall engagement scale survey. We analyzed the significance of various qualities of the text in predicting how engaging a reader is likely to find it. As enjoyment of fiction is highly contextual, we also investigated individual differences in our data. Furthering our understanding of what captivates readers in fiction will help better inform models used in creative narrative generation and collaborative writing tools.
Neis, Rose De Langis, Karin Kim, Zae Myung Kang, Dongyeop
An Analysis of Reader Engagement in Literary Fiction through Eye Tracking and Linguistic Features