Does Medium Matter When Comprehending Narratives?

• In Event: Comprehension and Integration of Text, Visual, and Multimedia Sources

Abstract

Students consume information across a variety of media (e.g., text, graphic content, film). Many theories of comprehension assume that comprehension processes are generic and operate regardless of medium (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990, Kintsch, 1998). Yet, few studies have directly explored the basis of this claim (e.g., Bagget, 1979; Magliano, Kopp et al., 2011). While there may be overlapping mechanisms, there are also reasons to suspect that comprehension processes may vary across media by virtue of the affordances of the media and differences in how it is processed during encoding (e.g., involves reading vs. viewing; Magliano, Loschy, et al., 2013). For example, authors can explicitly convey characters’ complex set of internal states (goals, beliefs, emotions), whereas this is rarely done explicitly in film as the use of voice-overs is seen as stylistically undesirable. Thus, it is quite possible that readers are able to develop more elaborate representations of characters and their internal states than viewers. The objective of this paper is to discuss the merits of the claim that comprehension processes are similar across media, with an emphasis on narrative comprehension, the domain where most research addressing this issue has focused. To achieve this objective, the authors conducted a literature review.
This review draws upon a framework proposed by Magliano, Loschky et al. (2013) that makes a distinction between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. Front-end cognitive processes are those that support the encoding of information (reading, viewing) and back-end processes support the construction of a mental model. This framework argues that back-end processes are similar across narratives experiences, but front-end processes differ.
Most of the studies exploring whether modality matters for the comprehension of narratives have focused on the extent that back-end processes or products are similar (e.g., Baggett, 1979; Magliano, Kopp, et al., 2011). The results of these studies have largely been consistent with the claim that mental models for visual and text-based narratives are similar. However, findings from this earlier review do not preclude the possibility that front-end processes may be affected by the nature and structure of how events are conveyed in narratives, potentially affecting back-end processes. As such, the present literature review identified studies that explored the relationship between front-end and back-end processes in narrative comprehension for text-based and visual-based narrative (Loschky, Larson, Magliano, & Smith, 2013).
This exploration has implications for theory and educational practice. In particular, the identification of common mechanisms of comprehension suggests that theories of comprehension can generalize across different types of experience. This suggests that modalities that may be easier for students to process could be used as scaffolds to promote strategies that improve narrative comprehension.

Authors

• Joe Magliano, Northern Illinois University

• James A. Clinton, Northern Illinois University