This study investigated, in a cross-cultural context, broad issues in response to literature, such as the relationships among comprehension processes, cognitive and emotional variables, appraisal of story endings, familiarity, interest, and liking. An Icelandic and an Italian folktale were presented to 55 Icelandic and 55 Italian undergraduates for reading, oral recall, and evaluation on a set of rating scales. The results revealed major similarities, but also a number of differences, between Icelandic and Italian readers' responses to the two stories. Both groups liked better the same story; this difference between stories was largely accounted for by ease of comprehension, happy end and just outcome, final resolution, elicited emotions, and imagery. Different understanding of the two stories was detected at the level of mental models, not of propositional representations. Cognitive processes strongly affected emotional response and interest, rather than vice versa. A number of interaction effects between story and readers' nationality revealed cross-cultural differences in structural recall, rated visual imagery, ratings of various aspects of the story endings, and some aspects of emotional response. Familiarity with similar stories accounted for only some of these cultural differences.
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