scholarly journals Cross-Codal Integration of Bridging Event Information in Narrative Understanding

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Huff ◽  
Dina Rosenfelder ◽  
Maria Oberbeck ◽  
Martin Merkt ◽  
Frank Papenmeier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Mental Effort ◽  
Narrative Comprehension ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Event Sequences ◽  
Event Information ◽  
Text Condition ◽  
Narrative Understanding

Visual narratives communicate event sequences by using different code systems such as pictures and texts. Thus, comprehenders must integrate information from different codalities. This study addressed such cross-codal integration processes by investigating how the codality of bridging event information (i.e. pictures, text) affects the understanding of visual narrative events. In Experiment 1, bridging event information was either present (as picture or text) or absent (i.e. not shown). The viewing times for the subsequent picture depicting the end state of the action were comparable within the absent and the text conditions. Further, the viewing times for the end state picture were significantly longer in the text condition as compared to the pictorial condition. In Experiment 2, we tested whether replacing bridging event information with a blank panel increases viewing times in a way similar to the text condition. Bridging event information was either present (as picture) or absent (not shown vs. blank panel). The results replicated Experiment 1. Additionally, the viewing times for the end state pictures were longest in the blank condition. In Experiment 3, we investigated the costs related to integrating information from different codalities by directly comparing the text and picture conditions with the blank condition. The results showed that the distortion caused by the blank panel is larger than the distortion caused by cross-codal integration processes. Summarizing, we conclude that cross-codal information processing during narrative comprehension is possible but associated with additional mental effort. We discuss the results with regard to theories of narrative understanding.

scholarly journals Visual narrative comprehension: Universal or not?

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Narrative Comprehension ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Graphic System ◽  
Educational Materials ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Sequential Images

AbstractVisual narratives of sequential images – as found in comics, picture stories, and storyboards – are often thought to provide a fairly universal and transparent message that requires minimal learning to decode. This perceived transparency has led to frequent use of sequential images as experimental stimuli in the cognitive and psychological sciences to explore a wide range of topics. In addition, it underlines efforts to use visual narratives in science and health communication and as educational materials in both classroom settings and across developmental, clinical, and non-literate populations. Yet, combined with recent studies from the linguistic and cognitive sciences, decades of research suggest that visual narratives involve greater complexity and decoding than widely assumed. This review synthesizes observations from cross-cultural and developmental research on the comprehension and creation of visual narrative sequences, as well as findings from clinical psychology (e.g., autism, developmental language disorder, aphasia). Altogether, this work suggests that understanding the visual languages found in comics and visual narratives requires a fluency that is contingent on exposure and practice with a graphic system.

Coming-Out Narratives in Audiovisual Culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paris S. Cameron-Gardos
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Competitive Sports ◽  
Comfort Zone ◽  
The West ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Summer Storm

The rejection of coming out as a linear narrative must be accompanied by an alternative to the formulas of confession, disclosure, and identity adoption that have pervaded the current representations of coming out in the West. The appearance of coming out in film narratives provides important opportunities to observe how elements such as repetition, rehearsal, and, above all, contrasts are incorporated into the stories that are recounted. Conventional coming-out films have relied so heavily on the restrictive nature of the genre’s narrative structure that the potential for alternative, or queered, realities of coming out is erased. The continual reappearance and adaptations of coming out will enable a better understanding of the ways in which the act is presented as a moment that is never finished and that often evades a final, perfected, and polished performance. Four specific narratives from queer film—Beautiful Thing (1996), Summer Storm(2004), Brotherhood (2009), and North Sea Texas (2011)—will be presented to offer counter models for coming out. In Beautiful Thing, the visual narrative demonstrates the importance of the reiterative, adaptable, and unanticipated representation of the act in visual media. In Summer Storm, the audience witnesses how coming out occurs in a world of competitive sports and where the teenage athletes reveal secrets that everyone already knows. In Brotherhood, the act of coming out is transformed into a moment when identities are instantaneously accepted and rejected within a homophobic, neo-Nazi subculture. In North Sea Texas, the script of coming out is reimagined by two characters who ambiguously decline any opportunity to define their identities. Coming out in visual narratives must be understood through an elaboration of Janet Harbord’s belief that the audience gravitates toward particular visual narratives where a comfort zone is created. These films have authored reiterative and adaptable approaches to the act of coming out that both comfort and challenge the audience.

Multimedia, Information Compexity, and Cognitive Processing

2008 ◽  
pp. 1248-1261
Author(s):  
Hayward P. Andres
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Skill Acquisition ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Mental Effort ◽  
Low Complexity ◽  
Information Complexity ◽  
Processing Quality ◽  
Optimal Learning ◽  
Presentation Media

Organizations are faced with increasing costs needed to train employees in today’s high technology environment. Educators are also striving to develop new training and teaching methods that will yield optimal learning transfer and complex skill acquisition. This study suggests that trainee/learner cognitive processing capacity, information presentation format and complexity, and multimedia technology should be leveraged in order to minimize training duration and costs and maximize knowledge transfer. It presents a causal model of how multimedia and information complexity interact to influence sustained attention, mental effort and information processing quality, all of which subsequently impact comprehension and learner confidence and satisfaction outcomes. Subjects read a text script, viewed an acetate overhead slide presentation containing text-with-graphics, or viewed a multimedia presentation depicting the greenhouse effect (low complexity) or photocopier operation (high complexity). Causal path analysis results indicated that presentation media (or format) had a direct impact on sustained attention, mental effort, information processing quality, comprehension, and learner confidence and satisfaction. Information complexity had direct effects on sustained attention, mental effort and information processing quality. Finally, comprehension and learner confidence and satisfaction were both influenced through an intervening sequence of sustained attention, mental effort and information processing quality.

scholarly journals Being explicit about the implicit: inference generating techniques in visual narrative

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEIL COHN
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Combinatorial Structures ◽  
Inference Generation ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Sequential Images ◽  
Verbal Discourse ◽  
Broad Level ◽  
Thought Bubbles

abstractInference has long been acknowledged as a key aspect of comprehending narratives of all kinds, be they verbal discourse or visual narratives like comics and films. While both theoretical and empirical evidence points towards such inference generation in sequential images, most of these approaches remain at a fairly broad level. Few approaches have detailed the specific cues and constructions used to signal such inferences in the first place. This paper thereby outlines several specific entrenched constructions that motivate a reader to generate inference. These techniques include connections motivated by the morphology of visual affixes like speech balloons and thought bubbles, the omission of certain narrative categories, and the substitution of narrative categories for certain classes of panels. These mechanisms all invoke specific combinatorial structures (morphology, narrative) that mismatch with the elicited semantics, and can be generalized by a set of shared descriptive features. By detailing specific constructions, this paper aims to push the study of inference in visual narratives to be explicit about when and why meaning is ‘filled in’ by a reader, while drawing connections to inference generation in other modalities.

Drawing on knowledge: Visual narrative analysis for critical environment and development research

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862097534
Author(s):  
Gregory L Simon ◽  
Bryan Wee ◽  
Deepti Chatti ◽  
Emily Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
Everyday Realities ◽  
Development Discourses

Counter-narratives to dominant development discourses are made possible using research methods designed to elicit marginalized voices. In this article, we propose a new analytical framework called the interpretive schema for drawings for analyzing visual narratives. The interpretive schema for drawings consists of five themes or interpretive lenses ( scale, centrality, inclusion, connections, and relationality) that were generated from maps of fuelwood collection in rural India. We suggest that the interpretive schema reflects and animates a range of spatialities that are central to geographic studies of human–environment dynamics. Using the interpretive schema for drawings in this way enables us to emphasize emic socio-spatial perspectives, and offers a critical research avenue through which everyday realities can be represented, understood, and validated. While other image-based research approaches, critical cartographies and participatory mapping exercises may encourage the expression of alternative knowledges, our proposed interpretive schema for drawing presents a specific set of guidelines for interpreting and making sense of visual narratives through explicit socio-spatial analysis.

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