Introducing a Measure of Fictionality Knowledge

To distinguish between texts claiming to convey true information about facts (i.e., nonfictional texts) and texts not making this claim (i.e., fictional texts), readers need knowledge about textual fictionality. We present KnowFi, a novel test of knowledge about textual fictionality in which test-takers are presented with short excerpts containing pragmatic, semantic, and formal fictionality-relevant information. Respondents need to categorize the work from which the excerpt is taken as probably fictional or probably not fictional. Study 1 (n = 252 adult participants) showed that KnowFi provides a comprehensive and reliable assessment of fictionality knowledge that meets psychometric requirements (2PL model). Item difficulty decreased with higher levels of convergence (e.g., the degree to which fictionality-relevant information is congruent on the pragmatic, semantic, and formal dimensions) and increased with the divergence of semantic and formal information from pragmatic information. In Study 2, KnowFi scores were found to differentiate between scholars specializing in fiction (n = 51) and scholars specializing in other areas (n = 50), despite the homogeneity of the study population regarding age and level of education, and controlling for group imbalances in lifetime exposure to fiction.