New paper: Notion of the Motion
I’m excited to say that my paper, “The notion of the motion: The neurocognition of motion lines in visual narratives” with Steve Maher is now published in the latest issue of Brain Research. It examines the comprehension of motion lines in comics. We show that having no lines is worse than having motion lines, but having backwards, anomalous lines is even worse than no lines. In their context in a sequence of images, processing of these anomalies may activate brain areas typically related to language processing. In addition, this understanding is also modulated by people’s experience reading comics, suggesting that they are conventionalized pieces of “vocabulary” in the visual language of comics.
The paper is available here (pdf) and in the “visual vocabulary” section of my Downloadable Papers page along with all other papers about visual language research. A short, graphic summary is readable here.
Full abstract:
Motion lines appear ubiquitously in graphic representation to depict the path of a moving object, most popularly in comics. Some researchers have argued that these graphic signs directly tie to the “streaks” appearing in the visual system when a viewer tracks an object (Burr, 2000), despite the fact that previous studies have been limited to offline measurements. Here, we directly examine the cognition of motion lines by comparing images in comic strips that depicted normal motion lines with those that either had no lines or anomalous, reversed lines. In Experiment 1, shorter viewing times appeared to images with normal lines than those with no lines, which were shorter than those with anomalous lines. In Experiment 2, measurements of event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that, compared to normal lines, panels with no lines elicited a posterior positivity that was distinct from the frontal positivity evoked by anomalous lines. These results suggested that motion lines aid in the comprehension of depicted events. LORETA source localization implicated greater activation of visual and language areas when understanding was made more difficult by anomalous lines. Furthermore, in both experiments, participants׳ experience reading comics modulated these effects, suggesting motion lines are not tied to aspects of the visual system, but rather are conventionalized parts of the “vocabulary” of the visual language of comics.
Cohn, Neil and Stephen Maher. 2015. The notion of the motion: The neurocognition of motion lines in visual narratives. Brain Research. 1601: 73-84
Comments
Finally some serious research in the wonder that are fixed but "moving" pictures in comics panels. I teach the techniques of these wonders for years now but only based on my own observations. Thanks!