The present study was aimed at the study of affective and emotional processes in reading action-oriented and experience-oriented literary narratives using reading time and time estimation measures. The study was designed to test hypotheses about the story types mentioned above and about the relation between the emotional appeal of each story-type and the time measures. Structural affects, which are predominant in action-oriented stories, accelerated reading; whereas empathy and identification with characters' emotions as well as the presence of the self-related emotions that are characteristic of experience-oriented stories slowed reading time. Action-oriented texts lead to a shorter duration of both reading time and episode time, whereas experience-oriented texts result in an expansion of time experience.
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