The impact of sensory modalities and background information on the emotional resonance of Li Bai's classical poetry

Yannan Zhang^*Xiao Wang

• Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

Emotional resonance refers to the reader's ability to find similarities between their own emotions or experiences and those expressed in poetry, thereby generating a profound emotional connection and a sense of identification. It can be understood as the extent to which an individual identifies with and comprehends the emotional representations in poetry. Emotional resonance is influenced by the sensory modalities through which individuals process external information-primarily visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory modalities-as well as by the cultural background embedded in the poetry. Using a repeated-measures experimental design, this study investigates how different sensory modalities and contextual background impact the emotional response triggered by Li Bai's classical poetry. The experiment includes five conditions, with the first three conditions focus on sensory modalities: visual, auditory, and visual-auditory modalities, and the latter two conditions examining the synergistic effects of background information (background music and background image) in interaction with sensory modalities. The results indicate that:(1) The visual modality and the visual-auditory modality receive higher ratings in emotional resonance compared with the auditory modality. (2) Background information (background music and background image) enhances the emotional resonance ratings of poetry. (3) The synergy between background information and sensory modalities further enhances emotional resonance ratings of poetry. This study explores the emotional resonance of poetry under different sensory modalities and background information, providing new theoretical insights for poetry education.