ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces key research on the psychology of attention, in particular the concepts of ‘figure-ground’ and ‘burying’. Cognitive psychology terms this shifting of our attention as figure-ground configuration. In cognitive poetics, researchers, notably P. Stockwell, have applied this knowledge from psychology to examine the role of figure-ground in reading literature. At a thematic level, we can use figure-ground to explain broad interpretations of whole texts. The chapter also introduces the concepts of ‘immersion’ and ‘transportation’ and explores its connections with attention. For teachers who have taught a text several times and studied it in detail, instances of foreshadowing can seem overwhelmingly obvious. Similar to noticing foreshadowing, pre-figuring necessarily stems from the teacher’s status as a reader of the text. The narrative schemas of first-time readers will contain only the story as they have read it so far, with things that have been figured for them to inform its contents and things that have remained in the ground potentially absent.
