Editors’ Introduction and Review: Visual Narrative Research: An Emerging Field in Cognitive Science

Abstract

Drawn sequences of images are among our oldest records of human intelligence, appearing on cave paintings, wall carvings, and ancient pottery, and they pervade across cultures from instruction manuals to comics. They also appear prevalently as stimuli across Cognitive Science, for studies of temporal cognition, event structure, social cognition, discourse, and basic intelligence. Yet, despite this fundamental place in human expression and research on cognition, the study of visual narratives themselves has only recently gained traction in Cognitive Science. This work has suggested that visual narrative comprehension requires cultural exposure across a developmental trajectory and engages with domain-general processing mechanisms shared by visual perception, attention, event cognition, and language, among others. Here, we review the relevance of such research for the broader Cognitive Science community, and make the case for why researchers should join the scholarship of this ubiquitous but understudied aspect of human expression.

The Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) Applied to Visual Narratives

“…Future studies should use behavioral and computational modeling methods together with neuroimaging methods to test hypotheses of SPECT in terms of their time course or functional differentiation. Furthermore, while research using non‐visual‐narrative materials is valuable for understanding the neurophysiological bases of SPECT, there is behavioral evidence, and some neurophysiological evidence, that visual narratives require processing unique to each medium (Cohn & Ehly, ; Cohn & Maher, ; Smith, ; Smith, Levin, & Cutting, ) and may require specialized literacy skills (Cohn, ; Cohn & Magliano, in press; Schwan & Ildirar, ). Thus, future tests of the neurophysiological bases of SPECT should prioritize visual narratives.…”

Coherence formation during narrative text processing: a comparison between auditory and audiovisual text presentation in 9- to 12-year-old children

“…Many children’s books are illustrated, thus constituting visual narratives. Cognitive processing of visual narratives is a relatively new field of study (Cohn and Magliano 2020 ). While combinations of text and pictures have been researched extensively in the context of multimedia learning (e.g., Mayer 2005 ), far fewer studies have explored how visual narrative content affects the basic processes of establishing coherence, a central aspect of comprehension.…”

Experiences of mental health support workers in mental healthcare practice: Three visual arts narratives

“…(Squire et al, 2014). Narrative research commonly focusses on verbal and written narrative; however, some contemporary writers highlight the limits of language and "tellability" (Llewellyn-Beardsley et al, 2020, p305;Cohn & Magliano, 2020) in that some complex experiences are beyond spoken/textual lan-…”

“…Arts-based narrative inquiry uses visual, dramatic and poetic art practices as means of exploring and representing human experience (Leavy, 2019;McNiff, 2008). It is situated within the narrative research paradigm in that the creation of art draws on personal experience and life history and the art produced tells stories about these lived experiences, yet it extends traditional practices of narrative research in that it goes beyond the limits of language (Cohn & Magliano, 2020). In the process of creating the art piece, tentative, ambivalent and previously unvoiced perceptions and meanings are grappled with and articulated in evocative ways (Barone & Eisner, 2012).…”

“…Using a narrative design, incorporating participative arts-based inquiry, MHSWs were facilitated to share and explore their personal capacities and challenges in their roles as recovery agents, as well as their evaluations of working in this dynamic healthcare environment. Sharing these narratives of experience through arts-based inquiry enables a depth of understanding and insight not commonly achieved through other research methods (Barone & Eisner, 2012;Cohn & Magliano, 2020). Thus, the research aimed to gain more in-depth knowledge concerning MHSW experience and to contribute an innovative methodology to research in this area.…”