 Among other examples of the cognitive study of literature are investigations of emotional responses. While aestheticians have tended to focus on the apparently “paradoxical” aspects of our emotional responses to fictions (for example why we are emotionally affected by the non-existent, see above  Section 7),  researchers in the cognitive sciences has begun a broader attempt to understand the role of emotions of all kinds in generating and maintaining interest in narrative and poetry (Menninghaus, Wagner, Wassiliwizky, et al. 2017); Jenefer Robinson’s (2005) is an example of work from within aesthetics that takes up this broader ambition while being strongly informed by empirical work. More recently, Kukkonen (2020) attempts an alignment between the expectations of a reader sometimes surprised by plot development and the predictive processing approach to perception and cognition (see above  Section 3).  It is an open question whether the predictive processing account sheds aesthetically relevant light on the reader’s experience rather than simply providing an account of the mechanisms involved (see above  Section 4).