Refining Measures of Cohesion and Complexity in “Silent” Graphic Narratives

Abstract

Prior research has suggested that narrative elements such as characters, objects, action, setting, and time could influence readers’ understanding of graphic narratives. In the current study, we conducted multi-level regression analyses to test whether our measures of visual content cohesion in graphic narratives predict readers’ comprehension of those graphic narratives, as measured by recall responses. We found that character and object overlap across panels did not significantly predict readers’ recall.

Authors

• Heather Ness-Maddox, Middle Georgia State University

• Amanda Dahl, Michigan State University