Does literary reading enhance social abilities?

Abstract

Story is a fundamental communication style in human being. Story comprehension is an immersed experience in the story world, and works as a simulation (or virtual experiences) in the real world. Thus, readers can learn how to understand story characters’ mental states. If it is true, literary reading should be a training of social abilities in the real world. We used "strange story task" as a near transfer measurement (verbal task), and "animation task" as a far transfer measurement (nonverbal task). The results suggest that literary reading enhances social abilities in the strange story task. For future, the story comprehension in the virtual reality or augmented reality would be promising to develop the pervasive training program for stoical abilities.