THE CONDITIONS OF FLOW IN READING: TWO STUDIES OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE

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Abstract
This paper examines the conditions under which readers experience intense engagement in a text, what Csikszentmihalyi has termed “optimal experience,” or “flow.” 1 1. We would like to thank Laurie MacGillivray, Steve Krashen, Lucy Tse, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions on this paper. View all notes Two studies of optimal experience are reported here. The first consisted of interviews with eleven children and adult pleasure readers concerning their experiences with flow during reading; the second examined reading flow by surveying 76 university students and professionals. Among the major findings of the studies were: (a) the large majority of the texts which provided the informants with flow were those which they had read for pleasure; (b) when informants were assigned texts in school, flow was more likely to occur when they had an interest in the text; (c) texts which provided flow were perceived as giving the reader personal or intellectual benefits; and (d) fiction was significantly more likely to produce flow than non‐fiction texts. Future research directions are discussed.

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