Navigating the narrative: An eye-tracking study of readers' strategies when Reading comic page layouts

Clare Kirtley; Christopher Murray; Phillip B. Vaughan; Benjamin W. Tatler

doi:10.1002/acp.4018

Navigating the narrative: An eye-tracking study of readers' strategies when Reading comic page layouts

Clare Kirtley^* (Corresponding Author), Christopher Murray, Phillip B. Vaughan, Benjamin W. Tatler

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

University of Dundee

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

In multimedia stimuli (e.g., comics), the reader must follow a narrative in which text and image both contribute information, and artists may use more irregular layouts which must still be followed correctly. While previous work has found that the external structure (outlines) of panels is a major contributor to navigation decisions in comics, other studies have shown that panel content can affect reading order. The present studies use eye-tracking to investigate these contributions further. In Experiment 1, the reading behaviors on six layout variations were compared. The influence of the external structure was replicated, but an effect of text location was also found for one layout type. Experiment 2 focused on variations of this particular layout, manipulating the location of text within critical panels. Panel content was a consistent effect for all variations. While most navigation decisions are made using the external structure, content becomes key when resolving ambiguous layouts.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	52-70
Number of pages	19
Journal	Applied Cognitive Psychology
Volume	37
Issue number	1
Early online date	21 Nov 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.4018
Publication status	Published - 1 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the work of Elliot Balson, Yiannis Giagis, Rossi Gifford, Damon Herd, Cletus Jacobs, Norrie Millar, Gary Walsh and Letty Wilson as the artists and writers of the comics used in this study.

Research Funding
Economic and Social Research Council. Grant Number: ESRC (ES/M007081/1)

Keywords

attention
comic structure
eye-tracking
reading
word-image combination
confidence intervals
movements
pictoral

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10.1002/acp.4018Licence: CC BY

Kirtley_etal_ACP_Navigating_the_Narrative_VOR
© 2022 The Authors. Applied Cognitive Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 3.44 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "In multimedia stimuli (e.g., comics), the reader must follow a narrative in which text and image both contribute information, and artists may use more irregular layouts which must still be followed correctly. While previous work has found that the external structure (outlines) of panels is a major contributor to navigation decisions in comics, other studies have shown that panel content can affect reading order. The present studies use eye-tracking to investigate these contributions further. In Experiment 1, the reading behaviors on six layout variations were compared. The influence of the external structure was replicated, but an effect of text location was also found for one layout type. Experiment 2 focused on variations of this particular layout, manipulating the location of text within critical panels. Panel content was a consistent effect for all variations. While most navigation decisions are made using the external structure, content becomes key when resolving ambiguous layouts.",

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Navigating the narrative: An eye-tracking study of readers' strategies when Reading comic page layouts

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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Cite this