Reading Words and Images

Navigating the narrative: An eye‐tracking study of readers' strategies when Reading comic page layouts

“…In a version with no strong overlap cues, our less experienced readers seemed equally likely to follow the Z‐path or not; however, when the presence and location of text is closer in one panel, it seems to increase the likelihood that they will choose that panel as their next step. While this is the first demonstration of panel content contributing to panel navigation (and in a specific layout), it is in agreement with previous work showing that readers often make their first fixations in a new panel on the regions containing text (Laubrock et al, 2018, Kirtley et al, 2018).…”

“…Rayner et al ( 2001), looking at how readers viewed multimedia magazine adverts, noted that the first goal seemed to be to get to the text first, before attending to the image for a longer period. This is further seen in Caroll et al's (1992) study of single panel cartoons, and the earlier work on comic reading by Kirtley et al (2018) and Ishii et al (2004). In the present study, 41% of first fixations into a panel were to text regions, despite the fact text occupies a smaller area of a panel than the image (on average text occupied just 14% of the comic page).…”

“…As previous work has shown readers will often direct saccades to text in upcoming panels (e.g., Kirtley et al, 2018;Laubrock et al, 2018), the location of text in Panels 1 and 2 was used as a fixed effect in the LMMs that follow in order to assess whether read- The influence of content is worth considering. The strongest effects were seen in viewing time on panels, where the amount of text increased viewing time.…”

“…Text as a feature of comic panels is a strong attractor of attention: Laubrock et al (2018) found that text within comic panels drew significantly more fixations than images, despite the fact that text regions typically occupied a much smaller area of a panel than images. Text also appears to be identified as a target for future fixations: Laubrock et al (2018) found readers used preview information more for text than images; on a similar note, Kirtley et al (2018) found that the presence of text within a panel increased the likelihood of readers visiting that panel, while textless panels were more likely to be skipped in first pass reading. The position of text within an upcoming panel can also influence the incidences of fixation within the region (Kirtley et al, 2018; Ishii et al, 2004).…”

“…Text also appears to be identified as a target for future fixations: Laubrock et al (2018) found readers used preview information more for text than images; on a similar note, Kirtley et al (2018) found that the presence of text within a panel increased the likelihood of readers visiting that panel, while textless panels were more likely to be skipped in first pass reading. The position of text within an upcoming panel can also influence the incidences of fixation within the region (Kirtley et al, 2018; Ishii et al, 2004). However, there is currently no work examining how content might contribute to readers' navigation, in conjunction with the panel layout.…”