More changes

As of yesterday I fully received my PhD (and the fancy hood!) from Tufts University. It was a long and great journey, but now it's on to the next venture. As I mentioned in my last post, I will be spending next year working on an introductory book on visual language theory that is due for Fall of 2013. I've been working hard on it lately and am very excited about it.

I will also be joining the Center for Research in Language at UC San Diego as a post-doctoral fellow starting in September. I'll be further investigating the neurocognition of sequential image processing (i.e., what happens in the brain when people are reading comics). I also plan to start learning techniques for measuring eye-movements, so we can begin to examine what people are looking at in comic panels (and how that relates to what goes on in the brain). I'm very excited for this opportunity and the potential for enlightening new collaborations and research.

In the meantime, hopefully I can start posting on the blog more often. Hopefully...

A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning

Lo and behold, I now have a new book out! My mentor, Ray Jackendoff, has a new book, A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning, and it is chalk full of illustrations by me! (... along with some choice Zippy strips by Bill Griffiths)

He has been working on this book throughout my time as his student, and I think the result is truly excellent. If you're looking for a good book about language, meaning, thought, and their relations, this is a good, non-technical read. I can't recommend it enough, and not just because my name is on the cover page. Check it out!

From the publisher's description:

A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning presents a profound and arresting integration of the faculties of the mind - of how we think, speak, and see the world. Ray Jackendoff starts out by looking at languages and what the meanings of words and sentences actually do. He shows that meanings are more adaptive and complicated than they're commonly given credit for, and he is led to some basic questions: How do we perceive and act in the world? How do we talk about it? And how can the collection of neurons in the brain give rise to conscious experience? As it turns out, the organization of language, thought, and perception does not look much like the way we experience things, and only a small part of what the brain does is conscious. Jackendoff concludes that thought and meaning must be almost completely unconscious. What we experience as rational conscious thought - which we prize as setting us apart from the animals - in fact rides on a foundation of unconscious intuition. Rationality amounts to intuition enhanced by language. Written with an informality that belies both the originality of its insights and the radical nature of its conclusions, A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning is the author's most important book since the groundbreaking Foundations of Language in 2002.

Review: "Language of Comics" in Art of Comics

The recent compilation, The Art of Comics edited by Aaron Meskin and Royt Cook contains several new articles on a "Philosophical Approach" to comic theory. This book tackles many interesting and pertinent topics about comics, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Here I'm going to focus on Darren Hudson Hicks' article, "The Language of Comics" since it is especially pertinent to the topics of my research and this blog. Hicks explores the claim that "comics constitute a language" and analyzes that claim in light of Currie's opinions that film cannot be a language. There are many problems with this article, and, I'll focus on some of the largest affronts. In the philosophical tradition then, I don't feel I'd do it any service to pull my punches, so here goes...

In much of this article, Hicks defends the similarities of comics and natural languages, and tries to point out where Currie's arguments fall flat. I should say upfront that I support this aim, since my own work has to respond to the same questions. To be complimentary upfront, I do agree with many of his points, and think that he is overall on the right track with many of his arguments. The biggest problem is his lack of knowing (or just citing) other appropriate literature.

For example, Currie argues that film cannot be considered a language because the signs (shots) are not arbitrary symbols. Hicks then defends comics for having a great deal of conventional signs, while pointing out that language also is not entirely arbitrary. His conclusion is that symbolic and iconic signs actually lie on a continuum, not a discrete categorization.

I agree with Hicks' position overall here and his analysis of it (neither all words nor all images are solely iconic or symbolic). My problem is that Hicks' conclusion misses the mark because of a lack of knowing previous research. He references C.S. Peirce's well known division between iconic, indexical, and symbolic types of reference in discussing the difference (and overlap) between images and words. Yet, he does not acknowledge that within Peirce's system, conventionality is not solely associated with symbols. Peirce recognizes that all three of those types of reference can be conventional, but only symbols derive their meaning solely from conventionality (i.e. Peirce readily would say that smiley faces are Conventional Icons, just like words are most often Conventional Symbols). Had Hicks known this distinction, the idea of a continuum between iconic and symbolic reference would not be needed. This reveals a lack of actually knowing the literature that is being cited.

Another grating section is where Hicks discusses the relationships between panels on a page. Here, he is trying to argue that individual panels on a page interact greatly with other panels. His point is well made, but in his discussion he resorts to reporting where "the eye" moves while reading the example comic page that is reprinted from Xenozoic Tales. As a cognitive psychologist, this grates on my nerves, because if eye-tracking experiments have taught us anything, it's that we often do not consciously know where our eyes are looking. To me, this renders his whole description a bit vacuous, because it is based on a faulty premise that he actually knows where his eyes are looking (which he doesn't: My own first reading of the page completely missed details he claims are "visually prominent" and that my eye should "gravitate towards" showing outright that his analysis might be wrong).

Overall though, the discussion of the relationship between comics and language is framed in the wrong way. Because he mostly adheres to the McCloudian conception that "comics ARE sequential images (± text)", he then must deal with the issue of whether "comics ARE language."

This is the wrong comparison, though it is frequently made. As I have discussed at length for the past 10 years (here, here, here, in talks, and many comixpedia articles and blog posts), "comics" are not a language. Rather, "comics" are a cultural context in which a visual language of sequential images is used, where it often combines with text. Just as novels are written in English, comics are written in a visual language (plus maybe also a written language). Dylan Horrocks hinted towards a similar breakdown in his essay, "Inventing Comics."

If Hicks recognized this disparity, much of his arguments would be simplified, and he would not have to deal with the issue of "defining comics" in relation to language. Also, he would not have to deal with the sticky issue of text-image relationships, since if "comics ARE language, what does it mean for that to enclose another language?" This whole issue is rendered moot if "comics" aren't argued as a language, but "sequential images" are a visual language which combines with written language in a socio-cultural object of "comics". (Another pet peeve here: he unnecessarily appeals to the brain processing text and images differently. Not only is mentioning the brain superfluous, but his citation for this is from over 40 years ago. Again... lit review?).

Not recognizing this argument for separating "visual language of sequential images" and "comics" again shows a lack of reading previous literature. In this case, it's a little personal, because it relates directly to my own work. Despite my work probably being the most vocal advocacy of the relationship between language and sequential images over the past 10 years, nowhere is my work mentioned or cited (though an actual comic of mine is featured and cited in a different essay in the book).

If this omission was on purpose (which I doubt), it raises the issue of "why"? If it was not on purpose (as I suspect), it betrays a lack of basic research on this topic. This is more my issue with the article. It's not so much that my ego is bruised (Horrocks should be mentioned, as should Mario Saraceni's dissertation, and others), but leaving it out seems an oversight in doing the appropriate background research for a paper topic that could greatly benefit from this point of view. (The books editors should also have given feedback on this, especially those I've corresponded with).

Knowing my work would also be useful for his concluding paragraphs. Here, he dismisses the idea of sequential images (re: "comics") being a type of full natural language because he cannot conceive of a "syntax" for sequential images. In fact, my book Early Writings on Visual Language laid out my first model of generative "syntax" for sequential images all the way back in 2003, and my recent research has actually provided empirical evidence for psychological validity of a "grammar" for sequential images. Granted, Hicks does mention two other approaches to "syntax" by Saraceni and Groensteen. But, these approaches receive little attention outside an endnote, and they are not discussed in depth. One would think such an important topic would receive more than passing mention as being a too "difficult concept to wrap one's head around" in the concluding paragraph.

Essentially then, this leaves me with the impression that Hicks is saying, "This idea is beyond me, so I can't address it well enough, and/or it must not actually exist." This does not see like the lasting impression one wants to have about an essay in a book collection purporting to be a solid foundation for a "philosophical" approach to comics.

Looking forward and backward

So, after 12 years of research and 6 years of grad school, I'm proud to say that I successfully defended my dissertation yesterday and now have a PhD in Psychology studying the how people's minds and brains understand comics. It's been a wild ride!

What's next then? Well, I have several papers that are set to come out soon or will soon be submitted to journals. Also, this seems like a good a place as any to announce that I will have a new book coming out in late 2013 from Continuum Books. It will introduce visual language theory, and will outline the basic structure and cognition of visual narratives. I'm very excited about it, and will post updates periodically as it approaches.

Thanks, dear readers, for your continued support of this work, and I look forward to big things to come.

Public Defense

For anyone in the Boston area and interested in hearing about comics and the brain, I'm defending my dissertation on Monday, and it's open to the public. I'll be speaking about my research on the "grammar" of sequential images, as found in comics:

"Structure, Meaning, and Constituency in Visual Narrative Comprehension"
Monday, April 9th at 4:30pm
Kreplick Conference room on the first floor of the Tufts Psychology Building (490 Boston Ave, Medford 02155)

New Article: Comics and the brain

I have a new paper available online (pdf), and I'm proud to say that this is my first brainwave study on comics. In this paper, now published by Cognitive Psychology, we argue that sequential images use a narrative "grammar" to distinguish coherent narrative sequences from random strings of images. We conducted two experiments measuring reaction times and brainwaves to examine the contributions of narrative structure and meaning to processing sequential images. Our findings provide evidence that sequential image comprehension uses a narrative structure that goes beyond "transitions" between panels.

Below is the abstract, though here's a pdf of a "graphic" version of the abstract...

Just as syntax differentiates coherent sentences from scrambled word strings, the comprehension of sequential images must also use a cognitive system to distinguish coherent narrative sequences from random strings of images. We conducted experiments analogous to two classic studies of language processing to examine the contributions of narrative structure and semantic relatedness to processing sequential images. We compared four types of comic strips: (1) Normal sequences with both structure and meaning, (2) Semantic Only sequences (in which the panels were related to a common semantic theme, but had no narrative structure), (3) Structural Only sequences (narrative structure but no semantic relatedness), and (4) Scrambled sequences of randomly-ordered panels. In Experiment 1, participants monitored for target panels in sequences presented panel-by-panel. Reaction times were slowest to panels in Scrambled sequences, intermediate in both Structural Only and Semantic Only sequences, and fastest in Normal sequences. This suggests that both semantic relatedness and narrative structure offer advantages to processing. Experiment 2 measured ERPs to all panels across the whole sequence. The N300/N400 was largest to panels in both the Scrambled and Structural Only sequences, intermediate in Semantic Only sequences and smallest in the Normal sequences. This implies that a combination of narrative structure and semantic relatedness can facilitate semantic processing of upcoming panels (as reflected by the N300/N400). Also, panels in the Scrambled sequences evoked a larger left-lateralized anterior negativity than panels in the Structural Only sequences. This localized effect was distinct from the N300/N400, and appeared despite the fact that these two sequence types were matched on local semantic relatedness between individual panels. These findings suggest that sequential image comprehension uses a narrative structure that may be independent of semantic relatedness. Altogether, we argue that the comprehension of visual narrative is guided by an interaction between structure and meaning.

Cohn, N., Paczynski, M., Jackendoff, R., Holcomb, P., & Kuperberg, G. (2012). (Pea)nuts and bolts of visual narrative: Structure and meaning in sequential image comprehension Cognitive Psychology, 65 (1), 1-38 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2012.01.003

Art and books you should check out

Here's a few links I've been meaning to post...

First, head over to my friend Helena's website. She's an amazing artist, so go check out her paintings!

Second, if you haven't already been seeing it in airport shelves and bookstores everywhere, you should check out the new book Situations Matter, by my friend and colleague Sam Sommers, a professor in the psychology department here at Tufts. The book explores how the contexts and people find themselves in often affect the way they behave...

"Every day and in all walks of life, we overlook the enormous power of situations—of context—in our lives. Just like the museum visitor neglects to notice the frames around paintings, so do most people miss the influence of ordinary situations on the way they think and act. But frames do matter: your experience viewing the paintings wouldn't be the same without them.

The same goes for human nature."

Go check it out! There's a reason it's been getting so much attention! And here's a short video promoting it as well:

Downloadable Un-Defining "Comics" article

It's not exactly a new article, but I realized that my article "Un-Defining 'Comics'" from the International Journal of Comic Art way back in 2005 was not downloadable from my site. That is now fixed! A downloadable pdf of the article is now available.

This article was among my first published works on visual language (and it kind of shows...gulp), and is the first that argues for a separation between the idea of "comics" and a "visual language" made up of images (i.e. "comics ≠ sequential images"). Enjoy!

Little busy for a bit...

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to blog as much as I'd like these days, and the coming months are likely to be a little quiet around here. I'm hoping to have a few big announcements to make soon. However, I'm aiming to defend  my dissertation this semester (!), so blog posts are likely to stay sparse for awhile.

Eye movement in reading comics

I've posted a few studies that have looked at how people's eyes move across comic pages (here and here), and I recently found another. This short study looked at when people's eye movements skip panels or go back and re-read them. 

They found that people spend more time reading panels with text than with just images, and that panels without text are more likely to be skipped and to be read with peripheral vision. Unusual panel arrangements (i.e. non-horizontal then vertical arrangements) also possibly led to jumping over panels (as was found in another study as well). After skipping these panels, participants then backtrack and re-read them.

These findings are consistent with previous studies that compared the eye-movements of expert and non-expert comic readers. Non-experts tend to focus more on text and read more erratically throughout a page. Experts tend to read more smoothly and focus more on the images. 

General studies like this are interesting, though I'd really like to see more studies that specifically target specific issues. Are there particular features of page layouts that motivate skipping panels? Are there features of layouts that impede on the actual comprehension of panels? Once we get beyond these very basic sorts of "what do eyes do generally" studies, we can really start exploring how looking at eye-movements can tell us about the comprehension of comic pages.

Chiba, Shinichi , Takamasa Tanaka, Kenji Shoji, and Fubito Toyama. 2007. "Eye Movement in Reading Comics." In Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Display Workshops, 1255-58 

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 lines vs. thin lines, or focusing on people vs. objects.

He then goes on to create an interesting taxonomy of ways that content connects with a narrative, and whether the focal and background elements are done in a common style. As a descriptive taxonomy, I think it works pretty well.

At the end of the piece, Fischer wishes there was more empirical work on how people read comics, especially with eye-trackers. Apparently he hasn't been reading this blog much! Amongst the many studies I've reviewed here about comprehending sequential images, there have been some eye-tracking research on comics that I review here and here.

Also, while my empirical work has mostly focused on how sequential images are comprehended, my theoretical work has looked at the capacity of panels to convey attention for many years. For example, I discuss it in this blog post, as well as in my article, A Visual Lexicon (pdf).

My approach to attention has focused less on the individual aspects of a panel's features, and more on how the panel as a whole acts as a "window" onto a scene. The panel then simulates the same type of "window" on the fictitious world that attention does in our visual perception. As I said in that blog post:

"Most of the time though, panels serve to exclude all relevant information except for the elements that need to be focused on, or at least clearly distinguish what is relevant from irrelevant. This lets panels provide a graphic manifestation of this mental "spotlight," allowing the author to control that attention instead of the reader's wandering eyes (which is one of the reasons I formally call panels "Attention Units")."

However, there's much that could be learned by studying the combination of the types of attention that Fischer talks about (those visible in a panel) and those that I talk about (how what is visible connects with what is not visible, or to other parts of a narrative).

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 for how much they make sense. Participation enters you in a raffle for a $50 gift certificate to Best Buy.

UPDATE: This survey is now closed. Thank you for your participation! If you would like to participate in future experiments, please email me.