Story World Absorption
MG uses a mixed-methods approach to examine children’s story world absorption: the feeling of being immersed, or “hooked,” in a book.
She is particularly interested in absorption’s relation to reading motivation, reading engagement, and reading comprehension, and whether absorption offers a new way to support students’ literacy development. She also examines the genres that children read as they move from childhood to adolescence, and the texts and text features that students find most absorbing.
Select Publications
Prezioso, M., & Harris, P.L. (Accepted; Forthcoming 2025). Early make-believe and children’s absorption in fiction. In Schindler, I. & Franziska, D. Development of aesthetic experience: Towards an integrative empirical approach. Cambridge University Press.
Prezioso, M., & Harris, P. L. (2023). Children’s absorption in fiction: Self-reports by avid and occasional readers. Psychology, Creativity, and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000611
Prezioso, M. (2023). From knowledge to understanding: A reorientation of English literature education. English in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/04250494.2023.2186221
Prezioso, M. (2022). Well, I’m back: Samwise Gamgee and the future of Tolkien’s literary pastoral. Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature. 41(1), 219-235. https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol41/iss1/13
Prezioso, M. (2021). Enchantment and understanding in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials: Advancing cognition through literature. Children’s Literature in Education, 52, 543–554. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09431-8