The Application of Psychological Knowledge to the Study of Literature for Children and Adolescents.

A literature study by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement revealed that as a result of instruction from their teachers, students at the end of junior high are well on their way to narrowing their perceptions of appropriate responses to a literary work to those which can be characterized as formal, analytic, and impersonal. This situation should be corrected so that students achieve a truer view of what the literary experience can be. In order to do this, teachers need to develop a method of literary inquiry directed to the reader's subjective experience with the work as well as to the work itself. And, in doing this, such abstract criteria as adequate theme, lively plot, memorable characters, and distinctive style would be set aside in favor of restoring reader response as a determining factor in the worth of a literary work. (JM)