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Record W3128556964 · doi:10.1515/fns-2020-0016

The shapes of stories: A “resonator” model of plot structure

2020· article· en· W3128556964 on OpenAlexaff
Steven Brown, Carmen Tu

Bibliographic record

VenueFrontiers of Narrative Studies · 2020
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldNeuroscience
TopicNeuroscience and Music Perception
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsPlot (graphics)Emotional valenceMetaphorValence (chemistry)FlutePhysicsPsychologyTheoretical physicsAcousticsMathematicsLinguisticsPhilosophyCognitionStatisticsQuantum mechanics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Plots have been described as having shapes based on the changes in tension that occur across a story. We present here a model of plot shape that is predicated on the alternating rises and falls in the protagonist’s emotional state. The basic tenet of the model is that, once the emotional valence of the beginning and ending of a story has been specified, then the internal phases of the story are constrained to connect these endpoints by oscillating between emotional rises and falls in a wavelike manner. This makes plot structure akin to a musical resonator – such as a flute – which can only conduct sound waves of certain discrete shapes depending on the structure of the tube’s endpoints. Using this metaphor, we describe four fundamental plot-shapes based on a 2 x 2 crossing of the emotional valence of a story’s beginning (happy beginning vs. sad beginning) and ending (happy ending vs. sad ending).

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.005
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.009
Threshold uncertainty score0.029

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.005
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.005
Scholarly communication0.0040.005
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0090.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.097
GPT teacher head0.316
Teacher spread0.219 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations8
Published2020
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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