Blog

  • Attention and comic panels

    Craig Fischer has a nice article over at The Comics Journal about how panels focus attention, particularly focusing on the work of Jack Kirby. He nicely keys in on several techniques that authors (like Kirby) use to highlight certain aspects of a panel over others. For example, putting things in the foreground vs. background, thick…

  • Take my online comics experiment!

    At long last, I have another comic experiment ready to go that needs your help, dear reader! This survey will help us prepare our next study looking at how the brain comprehends comics, and your help would be greatly appreciated. It should take roughly 15 minutes and involves reading comics and giving a basic rating…

  • A checklist for decent scholarship

    I’ve read a ridiculous amount of research on the comprehension of sequential images the last few years. Many people have written papers about this topic, often from many different disciplines. While I can respect that not everyone will aim for the linguistic and psychological approach that I use (and nor should they if they have…

  • On tap…

    Thank you to everyone who came out for my talk last week at the New York Comic Con! I had a great time giving the presentation, so I hope it was as enjoyable for all you in the audience. I have a few blog posts planned for the coming weeks if I can find the…

  • New York ComicCon 2011

    Next Saturday on October 15th I’ll be speaking at the New York ComicCon for the first time. Here’s my blurb from the program: 4:00-5:30 Comics Studies Conference 6: Understanding Comics and the Self—Neil Cohn (Tufts University) discusses several psychology experiments measuring reaction time and brainwaves that contribute to our understanding of what goes on in…

  • Development of drawing abilities

    The book Making Sense of Children’s Drawings by John Willats puts forth a compelling theory of how kids learn to draw, and the course of that development. To Willats, drawings link up to our mental conceptions of how things look in the world, thereby rejecting a view that says drawings are entirely based on what we see. A…

  • Graphical Abstracts

    A friend of mine passed along this interesting link today. The academic publisher Elsevier looks like it’s now accepting “graphical abstracts” for scientific papers in journals: A Graphical Abstract should be a one-image file and should visualize one process or make one point clear. For ease of browsing, the Graphical Abstract should have a clear…

  • What is the human language faculty?

    My mentor, Ray Jackendoff, has a new article out in the journal Language that mentions my research (as well as has some illustrations by me): Jackendoff, Ray. 2011. What is the human language faculty?: Two views. Language 87(3):586-624 The piece explores the biological foundation of our capacity for language, and what components of cognition contribute…

  • Segmentations in visual narrative

    Gernsbacher’s 1985 paper “Surface information loss in comprehension” is an important article on the comprehension of sequential images, and one that has informed much of my current research. It is based on her dissertation, and describes several experiments. Overall, Gernsbacher had participants read the Mercer Mayer book Frog, where are you? to question whether people can…

  • Waning days of studenthood

    Tuesday will begin what looks to be my last year of grad school, which means my last year of being a student. Yikes! That means I’m currently balancing finishing my projects, helping teach classes, writing/revising papers, and looking for what’s next. Should be a wild semester! I have quite a few projects underway right now,…