Reader Response Research Articles

A Study of the Individualism Accounts on American Literature through Reader Response Criticism

This study is by no means a comprehensive account of individualism or more accurately, individualism, in America. It is intended to be more suggestive than comprehensive though it is characterized by more summery than controversy. Many ideas as well as some of the highlights of American manifestations of individualism and modes of individualistic thought and philosophy have been added. What follows, then, is merely a look at some of the high-water marks of literary American individualism and an attempt to offer some cursory explanations for this American phenomenon in theory and practice. This study was under an exploratory qualitative method supported by an interdisciplinary approach of American Studies. Reader-Response criticism is used to make perspective and interpretation without a doubt. The sample was 28 students taking the American Society and literature course at the Universitas Islam Sultan Agung Semarang. The completion of this research shows the students have creativity and freedom to express their innovation in learning American literature. The cornerstone of individual conscience has to be their credos for changing into a better life through the social, political, economic, and moral autonomy of each individual.

Queering the Book Club: Empathy Development Through Young Adult Literature in Australian Discussion Groups

Young Adult (YA) literature that focuses on the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities empowers young readers, challenges social stigma and discrimination, and supports identity formation. This article explores the impact of queer YA literature on young queer and questioning readers, with a specific focus on how it can develop empathy within its audience. We analyzed reader responses to queer representation through monthly focus groups with twenty-three queer-identifying participants. Over eight months the participants discussed pre-selected queer YA texts. We found that queer YA literature has the capacity to not only empower its readers, but to develop their capacity for empathy, challenge perceived social norms, and demonstrate the potential of literature as a tool for activism and advocacy. Showing younger readers diverse experiences within queer YA literature can support readers to see themselves reflected on the page, and challenge reductive and restrictive views about queer identities.

Reader Response: Variations in Seizure Frequency During Pregnancy and Postpartum by Epilepsy Type.

Reader Response: Variations in Seizure Frequency During Pregnancy and Postpartum by Epilepsy Type.

Reader Response: Cognitive Outcome 1 Year After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Results From the TRACK-TBI Study.

Reader Response: Cognitive Outcome 1 Year After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Results From the TRACK-TBI Study.

Fabricating response: Preservice elementary teachers remediating response to The Circuit through 3D printing and design

Building on sociocultural theories of literacy learning, in this article, we think at the intersection of reader response theory and multimodal literacies to examine how 13 preservice teachers in the course Teaching Social Sciences Through the Arts remediated responses to Francisco Jiménez’s The Circuit: Stories From the Life of a Migrant Child through additive manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing) and arts-integrated making. Through qualitative analyses of participants’ in situ processes and product(s), we identified a range of ideological and material supports and constraints during the digital fabrication process. Reading and responding to text—as mediated actions and events—became iterative spaces wherein individual understandings of text transformed into encounters of difference. Suggesting that participants’ artifactual responses at times operated as critical literacy texts, our analyses of 3D fabrication and remediated responses led us to consider how modalities of composition yielded unique affordances and constraints to the ways readers encountered texts and expressed and responded to controversial social issues.

Reader Response: Association of Central Hypersomnia and Fatigue in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis: A Polysomnographic Study.

Reader Response: Association of Central Hypersomnia and Fatigue in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis: A Polysomnographic Study.

Reader Response: Spontaneous ARIA-like Events in Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy-Related Inflammation: A Multicenter Prospective Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Reader Response: Spontaneous ARIA-like Events in Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy-Related Inflammation: A Multicenter Prospective Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Reader’s Responses of the Colonized Land in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This study discusses colonialism in Africa in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It aims to study readers' responses regarding colonialism in the novella. The research uses a reader's response approach applying David Bleich's theory and the postcolonial theory of literary criticism of Edward Said. The methods of collecting data include spreading questionnaires to local officials and library research. The investigation also uses thematic analysis, which identifies, analyzes, and interprets patterns of the data collected from the respondents. This research reveals that everyone has their own opinion and broad view of colonialism. In the readers' responses to Heart of Darkness, the readers show that they are against colonialism and judge this work as a work that describes colonialism.

Reader Response: Stroke Among SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Recipients in Mexico: A Nationwide Descriptive Study.

This article presents a study of stroke occurrence among COVID-19 vaccine recipients in Mexico.1 It should be noted that a passive epidemiologic surveillance system cannot detect the incidence rate; therefore, a conclusion that “stroke remains an exceedingly rare event” is not justified.1 Multiple studies have demonstrated extreme underreporting in passive systems. In addition, by looking only at adverse events following immunization occurring within 30 days, one will miss many reports of strokes. Even vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia is defined as occurring up to 42 days postvaccination.

Reader Response: Stroke Among SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Recipients in Mexico: A Nationwide Descriptive Study.

We read with great interest the article by Lopez-Mena et al.1 We present our experience with a 28-year-old man who was admitted to our hospital with right-sided weakness on awakening. The patient was febrile for 2 days after the second dose of the BNT162b2 vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. His medical history was unremarkable. Brain magnetic resonance imaging revealed an acute ischemic stroke in the distribution of the left posterior cerebral artery.

Reader Response: Accuracy of CT Perfusion-Based Core Estimation of Follow-up Infarction: Effects of Time Since Last Known Well.

In the article by Sarraj et al.,1 the authors conclude that the rate of core overestimation on CT perfusion (CTP) was low and limited to patients with ultra-early image acquisition and fast reperfusion, with a significant influence of time on CTP accuracy. However, we believe that additional information would be useful to better understand the study results and their external validity.

Reader Response: Blood Neurofilament Light in Progressive Multiple Sclerosis: Post Hoc Analysis of 2 Randomized Controlled Trials.

The study by Leppert et al.1 presents interesting findings on neurofilament light chain (NfL) but raises methodological concerns. First, it was not stated whether the NfL quantification in EXPAND and INFORMS was performed with the same batches of reagents; a batch-to-batch variability of 20%–50% is a common concern. Second, a fixed NfL threshold was used, which may lead to inaccurate conclusions.

Augustine’s Biblical Hermeneutics: Its Three Characteristics and Significance for Today

In focusing mainly on Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana, this paper discusses three major characteristics of his hermeneutics. First, he understands the Scriptures as signs that point to the transcendent reality of God. This understanding of the Scriptures anticipates today’s reader response theories and the hermeneutical concept, the ‘surplus of meaning’. It also rules out biblicism, by reminding us that the role of Scripture is provisional and instrumental. Second, Augustine’s hermeneutics has existential and moral tendencies. He emphasizes the essential connection between interpretation of Scripture and the interior attitude and moral quality of the interpreter. In this regard, Augustine’s hermeneutics anticipates and has influenced contemporary hermeneutical theory according to which a life-relation to the subject matter is essential to understanding. Third and finally, the rule of charity and the rule of faith are the most important criteria in Augustine’s hermeneutics. Such an emphasis on the rule of charity and the rule of faith is consonant with contemporary hermeneutics, which underscores that understanding takes place in a particular tradition.

‘Children My Age Should Be Reading Books Like Journey to Jo’burg’: Patterns of Anti-Racist Reading in Archived Reader Responses

Using archived reader responses to Beverley Naidoo’s Journey to Jo’burg (1985), I employ the framework of Antiracist Pedagogy to explore how readers engage with the novel’s indictment of racism in apartheid South Africa. Drawing on classroom responses from a variety of global contexts, I develop a context-orientated approach to reader response criticism that draws on theories of child agency developed by Karen Sánchez-Eppler (2005) and Robin Bernstein (2011). Using this approach, I identify four recurring patterns of engagement with the theme of racism: affect, identification, resistance, and critical literacy. Through my analysis, Naidoo’s child readers emerge as partial subjects whose agency is not fixed but continuously negotiated in the play between text and context. These readers claim authority to speak about literature and their own experiences of racism, and conceive of radical, anti-racist literature as essential in their lives and those of their fellow children.

IMPURITY AND MARRIAGES: A READER RESPONSE STUDY OF AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE

Every society's basic concerns revolve around marriage, which call for both mental and physical coordination to ensure a long-lasting chain of relationships. Responsible actions and a good outlook enable people to participate in society and make marriage effective in many ways. Couples' deliberate behavior and pervasive social phenomena are to blame for the disruption in marital matters. An American Marriage (2018) by Tayari Jones is the subject of the current study, which explores marital problems. Reader-Response Theory (RRT) by Rosenblatt (1978) and Fish (2000) is used for the textual analysis of the novel to determine the marital concerns highlighted in the narrative. RRT bases its interpretation of the texts on the reader's experiences, goals, attitude, and preexisting theologies. RRT expands the text's essential elements by manipulating new meanings that are not contained in the text. The study's main goals are to identify the social vices, behaviors, and ambitions of the characters that fall victim to problems and have an impact on the marriage features depicted in the book. The methodology used to manipulate the objectives is qualitative and descriptive in nature. The study's findings indicate that while male members of marriages frequently leave responsible and constructive behavior in favour of sexual lust and freedom of action, this leads to the breakdown of marriages. The findings also demonstrate that women have stronger intentions than men to preserve the marital union since women's gender demands "protection and loyalty," which are typically not met by male members, leading to the breakdown of the union. Keywords: Freedom, Marriage, Pleasure, Responsibilities.

Bodily involvement in readers’ online book reviews: applying Text World Theory to examine absorption in unprompted reader response

AbstractDavid Miall was, for many scholars, the person welcoming them into the field of empirical literary studies. The research he conducted together with Don Kuiken on the effects of stylistic features on reading, with a central role for (self-modifying) feeling (cf. Miall, David S. & Don Kuiken. 1994. Foregrounding, defamiliarization, and affect: Response to literary stories. Poetics 22(5). 389–407) has been the inspirational foundation for much of the research conducted in this and other fields, such as cognitive poetics. By combining methods from traditional literary reading (such as close reading), with methods more commonly used in psychology (such as experimental designs and self-report questionnaires), he gave new depth to the concept of reader response research (Whiteley, Sara & Patricia Canning. 2017. Reader response research in stylistics.Language and Literature26(2). 71–87), concerning himself with actual readers’ testimonials. In honour of David, this paper will present a close reading, not of a literary text, but of a particular reader testimonial, namely an online book review. By applying a close reading informed by Text World Theory, I attempt to show how the social context in which this review was written influenced the expression of narrative absorption the reader experienced during reading. Consequently, I argue for an expansion not just of the methodological toolbox we use to investigate absorption in online social reading, but for an expansion of the concept of story world absorption itself.

Reader Response: Association of Statins With Cerebral Atherosclerosis and Incident Parkinsonism in Older Adults.

I read this study with interest, which found that statin use by the elderly was associated with a reduced risk of developing vascular parkinsonism.1 Past studies have found that the risk of neurodegenerative Parkinson disease (PD) is inversely associated with serum levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.2 Recently, a large prospective randomized controlled clinical trial determined that PD progression did not differ significantly between patients with early PD who were randomized to receive simvastatin or placebo.3

Reader Response: Prolonged Cardiac Monitoring and Stroke Recurrence: A Meta-analysis.

I read with interest the study by Tsivgoulis et al.,1 which summarizes the available evidence on prolonged cardiac monitoring after stroke. However, I think that the decision to look at recurrent stroke as the primary outcome and only consider intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) as a safety outcome might overestimate the benefit of prolonged monitoring.

Reader Response: Prolonged Cardiac Monitoring and Stroke Recurrence: A Meta-analysis.

Tsivgoulis et al.1 should be commended for this meta-analysis follow-up to their 2019 work, which demonstrates the utility of prolonged cardiac monitoring for the goal of stroke secondary prevention. For those of us who navigate these clinical waters on a regular basis, it is refreshing to read our daily conundrum so precisely summarized. It would be a welcome addition to this analysis to include other common heart rhythm markers of cardiopathy (AT, premature atrial contractions, and high-burden premature ventricular contraction) encountered on a short-term and 30-day monitors that are often used to justify the cost, risk, and inconvenience of implantable loop recorder (ILR) use.

Reader Response: Clinical Reasoning: A Young Man With Daily Episodes of Altered Awareness.

This is a nice report of stretch syncope.1 Evaluation of transient loss of awareness is a great challenge with financial issues because of repeated examinations or investigations and prognostic implications.2 Because prolonged syncope is an important frequent differential diagnosis of seizure, it should be ruled out in almost every case of suspected seizure, especially in an erect posture.2