Psycholinguistic research of literary texts perception by high school students

The article presents some results of the experimental research on perception of the literary text by high school students. The results of the piloting experiment and two stages of the main experiment comprise the empirical database of the research. The experiment is based on Russian literary works of different genres. The analysis of the experimental material allows concluding that the method of semantic differential is methodologically reasonable and effective when determining the nature of the impact of the literary text on the students of different ages (10-17 years), exploring the personality of the addressee and its emotional attitude to the texts studied at literature lessons. Comparing the results of the three stages of the experiment, the authors concludedabout the necessity to select the scalescarefully;a number of scales invented by experts or selected from the list of recommended scales for experiments of this typehave not been considered as relevant or optimal. The authors point that such factors as simultaneous acquaintance with the text and the execution of the experiment or the delayed execution of the experimental task (for one month or one year for the experiment in question) influence the responses of test subjects. The authors come to the conclusion that the experiment proves the expedience of combining research methods, in particular the use of a questionnaire or a group in-depth interview (focus group method) after the experiment. The analysis of the results of the experiment conducted with the method of the semantic differential made it possible to reveal the emotionally evaluative component of the text perception by students of different ages who possess different conceptual systems.