(Pea)nuts and bolts of visual narrative: structure and meaning in sequential image comprehension

Linguistic inputs must be syntactically parsable to fully engage the language network

Human language comprehension is remarkably robust to ill-formed inputs (e.g., word transpositions). This robustness has led some to argue that syntactic parsing is largely an illusion, and that incremental comprehension is more heuristic, shallow, and semantics-based than is often assumed. However, the available data are also consistent with the possibility that humans always perform rule-like symbolic parsing and simply deploy error correction mechanisms to reconstruct ill-formed inputs when needed. We put these hypotheses to a new stringent test by examining brain responses to a) stimuli that should pose a challenge for syntactic reconstruction but allow for complex meanings to be built within local contexts through associative/shallow processing (sentences presented in a backward word order), and b) grammatically well-formed but semantically implausible sentences that should impede semantics-based heuristic processing. Using a novel behavioral syntactic reconstruction paradigm, we demonstrate that backward-presented sentences indeed impede the recovery of grammatical structure during incremental comprehension. Critically, these backward-presented stimuli elicit a relatively low response in the language areas, as measured with fMRI. In contrast, semantically implausible but grammatically well-formed sentences elicit a response in the language areas similar in magnitude to naturalistic (plausible) sentences. In other words, the ability to build syntactic structures during incremental language processing is both necessary and sufficient to fully engage the language network. Taken together, these results provide strongest to date support for a generalized reliance of human language comprehension on syntactic parsing.

The electrophysiology of lexical prediction of emoji and text

As emoji often appear naturally alongside text in utterances, they provide a way to study how prediction unfolds in multimodal sentences in direct comparison to unimodal sentences. In this experiment, participants (N = 40) read sentences in which the sentence-final noun appeared in either word form or emoji form, a between-subjects manipulation. The experiment featured both high constraint sentences and low constraint sentences to examine how the lexical processing of emoji interacts with prediction processes in sentence comprehension. Two well-established ERP components linked to lexical processing and prediction - the N400 and the Late Frontal Positivity - are investigated for sentence-final words and emoji to assess whether, to what extent, and in what linguistic contexts emoji are processed like words. Results indicate that the expected effects, namely an N400 effect to an implausible lexical item compared to a plausible one and an LFP effect to an unexpected lexical item compared to an expected one, emerged for both words and emoji. This paper discusses the similarities and differences between the stimulus types and constraint conditions, contextualized within theories of linguistic prediction, ERP components, and a multimodal lexicon.

Anaphoric distance dependencies in visual narrative structure and processing

Linguistic syntax has often been claimed as uniquely complex due to features like anaphoric relations and distance dependencies. However, visual narratives of sequential images, like those in comics, have been argued to use sequencing mechanisms analogous to those in language. These narrative structures include "refiner" panels that "zoom in" on the contents of another panel. Similar to anaphora in language, refiners indexically connect inexplicit referential information in one unit (refiner, pronoun) to a more informative "antecedent" elsewhere in the discourse. Also like in language, refiners can follow their antecedents (anaphoric) or precede them (cataphoric), along with having either proximal or distant connections. We here explore the constraints on visual narrative refiners created by modulating these features of order and distance. Experiment 1 examined participants' preferences for where refiners are placed in a sequence using a force-choice test, which revealed that refiners are preferred to follow their antecedents and have proximal distances from them. Experiment 2 then showed that distance dependencies lead to slower self-paced viewing times. Finally, measurements of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in Experiment 3 revealed that these patterns evoke similar brain responses as referential dependencies in language (i.e., N400, LAN, Nref). Across all three studies, the constraints and (neuro)cognitive responses to refiners parallel those shown to anaphora in language, suggesting domain-general constraints on the sequencing of referential dependencies.

Individual differences in the neural dynamics of visual narrative comprehension: The effects of proficiency and age of acquisition

Understanding visual narrative sequences, as found in comics, is known to recruit similar cognitive mechanisms to verbal language. As measured by event-related potentials (ERPs), these manifest as initial negativities (N400, LAN) and subsequent positivities (P600). While these components are thought to index discrete processing stages, they differentially arise across participants for any given stimulus. In language contexts, proficiency modulates brain responses, with smaller N400 effects and larger P600 effects appearing with increasing proficiency. In visual narratives, recent work has also emphasized the role of proficiency in neural response patterns. We thus explored whether individual differences in proficiency modulate neural responses to visual narrative sequencing in similar ways as in language. We combined ERP data from 12 studies examining semantic and/or grammatical processing of visual narrative sequences. Using linear mixed effects modeling, we demonstrate differential effects of visual language proficiency and "age of acquisition" on N400 and P600 responses. Our results align with those reported in language contexts, providing further evidence for the similarity of linguistic and visual narrative processing, and emphasize the role of both proficiency and age of acquisition in visual narrative comprehension.

Semantic processing of verbal narratives compared to semantic processing of visual narratives: an ERP study of school-aged children

There is a misconception that pictures are easy to comprehend, which is problematic in pedagogical practices that include pictures. For example, if a child has difficulties with verbal narration to picture sequences, it may be interpreted as specific to spoken language even though the child may have additional difficulties with comprehension of visual narratives in the form of picture sequences. The purpose of the present study was therefore to increase our understanding of semantic processing in the pictorial domain in relation to semantic processing in the verbal domain, focusing on 9-13 years-old children with typical language development. To this end, we measured electrical brain responses (event related potentials, ERPs) in 17 children to (i) pictures (panels) that were predicted versus unpredicted in sequences of panels that conveyed visual narratives and (ii) words that were predicted versus unpredicted in sentences that conveyed verbal narratives. Results demonstrated similarities as there were no significant difference in the magnitude of the N400 effect across domains. The only difference between domains was the predicted difference in distribution, that is, a more posterior N400 effect in the verbal domain than in the pictorial domain. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the complexity of processing of visual narratives and its shared features with processing of verbal narratives, which should be considered in pedagogical practices.

Sequences in harmony: Cognitive interactions between musical and visual narrative structure

From film and television to graphic storytelling, tonal music can accompany visual narratives in a variety of contexts. The apprehension of both musical and narrative sequences involves temporal categories in ordered patterning, which raises an interesting question: Do musical progressions and visual narratives rely on shared sequence processing mechanisms? If this is the case, then cues from music and sequential static images, when presented simultaneously, should interact during audiovisual online processing. We tested this question by measuring reaction times to target picture panels appearing in visual narrative (comic strip) sequences, which were presented panel by panel and synchronized with musical chord progressions. Image sequences were either coherent narratives or incoherent (random) panels, and they were aligned with musical accompaniment consisting of coherent tonal chord progressions or non-tonal (unrelated) chords. Reaction times were faster for target images in coherent sequences than incoherent sequences, and even faster for coherent images with tonal accompaniment than non-tonal chords. This indicated an interaction between sequential structures across domains. We take these results as evidence for a shared, domain-general sequence processing mechanism operating across music and visual narrative.

Visual resemblance and interaction history jointly constrain pictorial meaning

How do drawings-ranging from detailed illustrations to schematic diagrams-reliably convey meaning? Do viewers understand drawings based on how strongly they resemble an entity (i.e., as images) or based on socially mediated conventions (i.e., as symbols)? Here we evaluate a cognitive account of pictorial meaning in which visual and social information jointly support visual communication. Pairs of participants used drawings to repeatedly communicate the identity of a target object among multiple distractor objects. We manipulated social cues across three experiments and a full replication, finding that participants developed object-specific and interaction-specific strategies for communicating more efficiently over time, beyond what task practice or a resemblance-based account alone could explain. Leveraging model-based image analyses and crowdsourced annotations, we further determined that drawings did not drift toward "arbitrariness," as predicted by a pure convention-based account, but preserved visually diagnostic features. Taken together, these findings advance psychological theories of how successful graphical conventions emerge.

[Disorders of social cognition in children]

The article presents an overview of scientific publications devoted to the study of social cognition as a separate cognitive function and its role in the formation of normal mental development. Modern ideas about the « theory of mind « and its neurobiological foundations are considered. The results of studies of social competence in children with autism, specific language impairment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and specific learning disorder are presented. The main neurocognitive deficits observed in violation of social cognition in children and the possibility of their pharmacological correction are considered.

Modulation of Spectral Representation and Connectivity Patterns in Response to Visual Narrative in the Human Brain

The regional brain networks and the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms subserving the cognition of visual narrative in humans have largely been studied with non-invasive brain recording. In this study, we specifically investigated how regional and cross-regional cortical activities support visual narrative interpretation using intracranial stereotactic electroencephalograms recordings from thirteen human subjects (6 females, and 7 males). Widely distributed recording sites across the brain were sampled while subjects were explicitly instructed to observe images from fables presented in “sequential” order, and a set of images drawn from multiple fables presented in “scrambled” order. Broadband activity mainly within the frontal and temporal lobes were found to encode if a presented image is part of a visual narrative (sequential) or random image set (scrambled). Moreover, the temporal lobe exhibits strong activation in response to visual narratives while the frontal lobe is more engaged when contextually novel stimuli are presented. We also investigated the dynamics of interregional interactions between visual narratives and contextually novel series of images. Interestingly, the interregional connectivity is also altered between sequential and scrambled sequences. Together, these results suggest that both changes in regional neuronal activity and cross-regional interactions subserve visual narrative and contextual novelty processing.

Connecting and considering: Electrophysiology provides insights into comprehension

The ability to rapidly and systematically access knowledge stored in long-term memory in response to incoming sensory information-that is, to derive meaning from the world-lies at the core of human cognition. Research using methods that can precisely track brain activity over time has begun to reveal the multiple cognitive and neural mechanisms that make this possible. In this article, I delineate how a process of connecting affords an effortless, continuous infusion of meaning into human perception. In a relatively invariant time window, uncovered through studies using the N400 component of the event-related potential, incoming sensory information naturally induces a graded landscape of activation across long-term semantic memory, creating what might be called "proto-concepts". Connecting can be (but is not always) followed by a process of further considering those activations, wherein a set of more attentionally demanding "active comprehension" mechanisms mediate the selection, augmentation, and transformation of the initial semantic representations. The result is a limited set of more stable bindings that can be arranged in time or space, revised as needed, and brought to awareness. With this research, we are coming closer to understanding how the human brain is able to fluidly link sensation to experience, to appreciate language sequences and event structures, and, sometimes, to even predict what might be coming up next.

Neural correlates of sex differences in communicative gestures and speech comprehension: A preliminary study

The goal of this study was to investigate whether the semantic processing of the audiovisual combination of communicative gestures with speech differs between men and women. We recorded event-related brain potentials in women and men during the presentation of communicative gestures that were either congruent or incongruent with the speech.Our results showed that incongruent gestures elicited an N400 effect over frontal sites compared to congruent ones in both groups. Moreover, the females showed an earlier N2 response to incongruent stimuli than congruent ones, while larger sustained negativity and late positivity in response to incongruent stimuli was observed only in males. These results suggest that women rapidly recognize and process audiovisual combinations of communicative gestures and speech (as early as 300 ms) whereas men analyze them at the later stages of the process.

When dogs meow: An electrophysiological study of lexical-semantic processing in toddlers

The goal of this study was to investigate lexical-semantic processing at an early phase of language development. Adults often communicate with children using infant-directed speech that typically involves lexical and syntactic modifications such as onomatopoeias (Soderstrom, 2007). Here, we asked how and when children start to show an advantage for processing conventional linguistic forms, such as common nouns, and consequently decreasing sensitivity to onomatopoeias. We recorded event-related brain potentials in children of two age groups (16-21 months and 24-31 months) and in an adult control group during the presentation of four conditions in which either common nouns or onomatopoeias were presented auditorily followed by a picture of an either congruent or incongruent object. We focused on the N400 effect, a more negative ERP response to incongruent compared with congruent semantic relations. The younger children showed an N400 effect only for onomatopoeic words, while the older children showed an N400 effect only for common nouns. The adults showed N400 effects for onomatopoeia and nouns. These different N400 effects suggest that onomatopoeia and common nouns are differently organized in children's semantic memory and that the acquisition of linguistic abilities affects and modifies semantic processing of different lexical information.

How to do Better N400 Studies: Reproducibility, Consistency and Adherence to Research Standards in the Existing Literature

Given the complexity of ERP recording and processing pipeline, the resulting variability of methodological options, and the potential for these decisions to influence study outcomes, it is important to understand how ERP studies are conducted in practice and to what extent researchers are transparent about their data collection and analysis procedures. The review gives an overview of methodology reporting in a sample of 132 ERP papers, published between January 1980 – June 2018 in journals included in two large databases: Web of Science and PubMed. Because ERP methodology partly depends on the study design, we focused on a well-established component (the N400) in the most commonly assessed population (healthy neurotypical adults), in one of its most common modalities (visual images). The review provides insights into 73 properties of study design, data pre-processing, measurement, statistics, visualization of results, and references to supplemental information across studies within the same subfield. For each of the examined methodological decisions, the degree of consistency, clarity of reporting and deviations from the guidelines for best practice were examined. Overall, the results show that each study had a unique approach to ERP data recording, processing and analysis, and that at least some details were missing from all papers. In the review, we highlight the most common reporting omissions and deviations from established recommendations, as well as areas in which there was the least consistency. Additionally, we provide guidance for a priori selection of the N400 measurement window and electrode locations based on the results of previous studies.

The electrophysiology of audiovisual processing in visual narratives in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

We investigated the semantic processing of the multimodal audiovisual combination of visual narratives with auditory descriptive words and auditory sounds in individuals with ASD. To this aim, we recorded ERPs to critical auditory words and sounds associated with events in visual narrative that were either semantically congruent or incongruent with the climactic visual event. A similar N400 effect was found both in adolescents with ASD and neurotypical adolescents (ages 9-16) when accessing different types of auditory information (i.e. words and sounds) into a visual narrative. This result might suggest that verbal information processing in ASD adolescents could be facilitated by direct association with meaningful visual information. In addition, we observed differences in scalp distribution of later brain responses between ASD and neurotypical adolescents. This finding might suggest ASD adolescents differ from neurotypical adolescents during the processing of the multimodal combination of visual narratives with auditory information at later stages of the process. In conclusion, the semantic processing of verbal information, typically impaired in individuals with ASD, can be facilitated when embedded into a meaningful visual information.

A starring role for inference in the neurocognition of visual narratives

Research in verbal and visual narratives has often emphasized backward-looking inferences, where absent information is subsequently inferred. However, comics use conventions like star-shaped “action stars” where a reader knows events are undepicted at that moment, rather than omitted entirely. We contrasted the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to visual narratives depicting an explicit event, an action star, or a “noise” panel of scrambled lines. Both action stars and noise panels evoked large N400s compared to explicit-events (300–500 ms), but action stars and noise panels then differed in their later effects (500–900 ms). Action stars elicited sustained negativities and P600s, which could indicate further interpretive processes and integration of meaning into a mental model, while noise panels evoked late frontal positivities possibly indexing that they were improbable narrative units. Nevertheless, panels following action stars and noise panels both evoked late sustained negativities, implying further inferential processing. Inference in visual narratives thus uses cascading mechanisms resembling those in language processing that differ based on the inferential techniques.

Implicit Semantic Processing of Linguistic and Non-linguistic Stimuli in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

While many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with language processing, non-linguistic semantic processing may be intact. We examined neural responses to an implicit semantic priming task by comparing N400 responses—an event-related potential related to semantic processing—in response to semantically related or unrelated pairs of words or pictures. Adults with ASD showed larger N400 responses than typically developing adults for pictures, but no group differences occurred for words. However, we also observed complex modulations of N400 amplitude by age and by level of autistic traits. These results offer important implications for how groups are delineated and compared in autism research.

Tea With Milk? A Hierarchical Generative Framework of Sequential Event Comprehension

To make sense of the world around us, we must be able to segment a continual stream of sensory inputs into discrete events. In this review, I propose that in order to comprehend events, we engage hierarchical generative models that "reverse engineer" the intentions of other agents as they produce sequential action in real time. By generating probabilistic predictions for upcoming events, generative models ensure that we are able to keep up with the rapid pace at which perceptual inputs unfold. By tracking our certainty about other agents' goals and the magnitude of prediction errors at multiple temporal scales, generative models enable us to detect event boundaries by inferring when a goal has changed. Moreover, by adapting flexibly to the broader dynamics of the environment and our own comprehension goals, generative models allow us to optimally allocate limited resources. Finally, I argue that we use generative models not only to comprehend events but also to produce events (carry out goal-relevant sequential action) and to continually learn about new events from our surroundings. Taken together, this hierarchical generative framework provides new insights into how the human brain processes events so effortlessly while highlighting the fundamental links between event comprehension, production, and learning.

Visual and Verbal Narrative Comprehension in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An ERP Study

We examined semantic processing in ASD children by presenting sentences with congruent or incongruent final words and visual narratives with congruent or incongruent final panels. An N400 effect to incongruent words appeared as compared to congruent ones, which was attenuated for the ASD children. We observed a negativity sustained to incongruous than congruous words, but only for the TD children. Incongruent panels evoked a greater fronto-central N400 amplitude than congruent panels in both groups. In addition, incongruent panels evoked a centro-parietal late positivity, only in controls. In conclusion, ASD children face processing deficits in both verbal and visual materials when integrating meaning across information, though such impairments may arise in different parts of the interpretive process, depending on the modality.

Making sense of human interaction benefits from communicative cues

We investigated whether communicative cues help observers to make sense of human interaction. We recorded EEG from an observer monitoring two individuals who were occasionally communicating with each other via either mutual eye contact and/or pointing gestures, and then jointly attending to the same object or attending to different objects that were placed on a table in front of them. The analyses were focussed on the processing of the interaction outcome (i.e. presence or absence of joint attention) and showed that its interpretation is a two-stage process, as reflected in the N300 and the N400 potentials. The N300 amplitude was reduced when the two individuals shared their focus of attention, which indicates the operation of a cognitive process that involves the relatively fast identification and evaluation of actor-object relationships. On the other hand, the N400 was insensitive to the sharing or distribution of the two individuals' attentional focus. Interestingly, the N400 was reduced when the interaction outcome was preceded either by mutual eye contact or by a perceived pointing gesture. This shows that observation of communication "opens up" the mind to a wider range of action possibilities and thereby helps to interpret unusual outcomes of social interactions.

Zooming in on visual narrative comprehension

The comprehension of visual narratives requires paying attention to certain elements and integrating them across a sequence of images. To study this process, we developed a new approach that modified comic strips according to where observers looked while viewing each sequence. Across three self-paced experiments, we presented sequences of six panels that were sometimes automatically "zoomed-in" or re-framed in order to highlight parts of the image that had been fixated by another group of observers. Fixation zoom panels were rated as easier to understand and produced viewing times more similar to the original comic than panels modified to contain non-fixated or incongruous regions. When a single panel depicting the start of an action was cropped to show only the most fixated region, viewing times were similar to the original narrative despite the reduced information. Modifying such panels also had an impact on the viewing time on subsequent panels, both when zoomed in and when regions were highlighted through an "inset" panel. These findings demonstrate that fixations in a visual narrative are guided to informative elements, and that these elements influence both the current panel and the processing of the sequence.

Predictability modulates neurocognitive semantic processing of non-verbal narratives

Predictability is known to modulate semantic processing in language, but it is unclear to what extent this applies for other modalities. Here we ask whether similar cognitive processes are at play in predicting upcoming events in a non-verbal visual narrative. Typically developing adults viewed comics sequences in which a target panel was highly predictable (“high cloze”), less predictable (“low cloze”), or incongruent with the preceding narrative context (“anomalous”) during EEG recording. High and low predictable sequences were determined by a pretest where participants assessed “what happened next?”, resulting in cloze probability scores for sequence outcomes comparable to those used to measure predictability in sentence processing. Through both factorial and correlational analyses, we show a significant modulation of neural responses by cloze such that N400 effects are diminished as a target panel in a comic sequence becomes more predictable. Predictability thus appears to play a similar role in non-verbal comprehension of sequential images as in language comprehension, providing further evidence for the domain generality of semantic processing in the brain.

An investigation of visual narrative comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorders

The present study analyzed the comprehension of visual narrative in a group of twelve children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Their performances were compared to a control group of fifteen children with typical development (TD) matched for age, level of formal education, and IQ. Visual narrative comprehension was assessed by administering a task that required children to understand narrative's global coherence by arranging in the correct order the constituent parts of stories presented in pictures. Specifically, the task evaluated children's ability to grasp how single events connected (causally and temporally) each other and how these connections led to the ending of the story. Results showed that children with ASD obtained significantly lower scores than children with TD. These results open to alternative interpretations of narrative impairments often reported in individuals with ASD, which might not be restricted to the linguistic code but stem from a deeper deficit in narrative processing that is independent from the expressive modality.

Visual narrative comprehension: Universal or not?

Visual narratives of sequential images - as found in comics, picture stories, and storyboards - are often thought to provide a fairly universal and transparent message that requires minimal learning to decode. This perceived transparency has led to frequent use of sequential images as experimental stimuli in the cognitive and psychological sciences to explore a wide range of topics. In addition, it underlines efforts to use visual narratives in science and health communication and as educational materials in both classroom settings and across developmental, clinical, and non-literate populations. Yet, combined with recent studies from the linguistic and cognitive sciences, decades of research suggest that visual narratives involve greater complexity and decoding than widely assumed. This review synthesizes observations from cross-cultural and developmental research on the comprehension and creation of visual narrative sequences, as well as findings from clinical psychology (e.g., autism, developmental language disorder, aphasia). Altogether, this work suggests that understanding the visual languages found in comics and visual narratives requires a fluency that is contingent on exposure and practice with a graphic system.

Electrophysiological indexes of ToM and non-ToM humor in healthy adults

The cognitive processes involved in humor comprehension were analyzed by directly comparing the time course of brain activity associated with the perception of slapstick humor and that associated with the comprehension of humor requiring theory of mind (ToM). Four different comic strips (strips containing humorous scenes that required ToM, non-ToM humorous strips, non-humorous semantically coherent strips and non-humorous semantically incoherent strips) were presented to participants, while their EEG response was recorded. Results showed that both of the humorous comic strips and the semantically incongruent strip elicited an N400 effect, suggesting similar cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of incongruent and humorous comic strips. The results also showed that the humorous ToM strips elicited a frontal late positive (LP) response, possibly reflecting the active deployment of ToM abilities such as perspective-taking and empathy that allow for the resolution and interpretation of apparently incongruent situations. In addition, the LP response was positively correlated with ratings of perceived amusement as well as individual empathy scores, suggesting that the increased LP response to ToM humorous strips reflects the combined activation of neural mechanisms involved in the experience of amusement and ToM abilities. Overall, humor comprehension appears to demand distinct cognitive steps such as the detection of incongruent semantic components, the construction of semantic coherence, and the appreciation of humoristic elements such as maladaptive emotional reactions. Our results show that the deployment of these distinct cognitive steps is at least partially dependent on individual empathic abilities.

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

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.

Drawn sequences of images, like those in comics and picture stories, are a pervasive and fundamental way that humans have communicated for millennia. Yet, the study of visual narratives has only recently gained traction in Cognitive Science. Here we explore what has held back the study of the cognition of visual narratives, and why researchers should join in scholarship of this ubiquitous aspect of expression.

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

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front‐end and back‐end cognitive processes. Front‐end processes occur during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back‐end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long‐term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front‐ and back‐end processes, and medium‐specific differences that likely produce variation in front‐end and back‐end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world.

Comprehension of visual narratives like comics, picture stories, and films involves both decoding the visual content and construing the meaningful events they represent. The Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) proposes a framework for understanding how a comprehender perceptually negotiates the surface of a visual representation and integrates its meaning into a growing mental model.

The grammar of emoji? Constraints on communicative pictorial sequencing

Emoji have become a prominent part of interactive digital communication. Here, we ask the questions: does a grammatical system govern the way people use emoji; and how do emoji interact with the grammar of written text? We conducted two experiments that asked participants to have a digital conversation with each other using only emoji (Experiment 1) or to substitute at least one emoji for a word in the sentences (Experiment 2). First, we found that the emoji-only utterances of participants remained at simplistic levels of patterning, primarily appearing as one-unit utterances (as formulaic expressions or responsive emotions) or as linear sequencing (for example, repeating the same emoji or providing an unordered list of semantically related emoji). Emoji playing grammatical roles (i.e., 'parts-of-speech') were minimal, and showed little consistency in 'word order'. Second, emoji were substituted more for nouns and adjectives than verbs, while also typically conveying nonredundant information to the sentences. These findings suggest that, while emoji may follow tendencies in their interactions with grammatical structure in multimodal text-emoji productions, they lack grammatical structure on their own.

Your Brain on Comics: A Cognitive Model of Visual Narrative Comprehension

The past decade has seen a rapid growth of cognitive and brain research focused on visual narratives like comics and picture stories. This paper will summarize and integrate this emerging literature into the Parallel Interfacing Narrative‐Semantics Model (PINS Model)—a theory of sequential image processing characterized by an interaction between two representational levels: semantics and narrative structure. Ongoing semantic processes build meaning into an evolving mental model of a visual discourse. Updating of spatial, referential, and event information then incurs costs when they are discontinuous with the growing context. In parallel, a narrative structure organizes semantic information into coherent sequences by assigning images to categorical roles, which are then embedded within a hierarchic constituent structure. Narrative constructional schemas allow for specific predictions of structural sequencing, independent of semantics. Together, these interacting levels of representation engage in an iterative process of retrieval of semantic and narrative information, prediction of upcoming information based on those assessments, and subsequent updating based on discontinuity. These core mechanisms are argued to be domain‐general—spanning across expressive systems—as suggested by similar electrophysiological brain responses (N400, P600, anterior negativities) generated in response to manipulation of sequential images, music, and language. Such similarities between visual narratives and other domains thus pose fundamental questions for the linguistic and cognitive sciences.

Visual narratives like comics involve a range of complex cognitive operations in order to be understood. The Parallel Interfacing Narrative‐Semantics (PINS) Model integrates an emerging literature showing that comprehension of wordless image sequences balances two representational levels of semantic and narrative structure. The neurocognitive mechanisms that guide these processes are argued to overlap with other domains, such as language and music.

Visual and linguistic narrative comprehension in autism spectrum disorders: Neural evidence for modality-independent impairments

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have notable language difficulties, including with understanding narratives. However, most narrative comprehension studies have used written or spoken narratives, making it unclear whether narrative difficulties stem from language impairments or more global impairments in the kinds of general cognitive processes (such as understanding meaning and structural sequencing) that are involved in narrative comprehension. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we directly compared semantic comprehension of linguistic narratives (short sentences) and visual narratives (comic panels) in adults with ASD and typically-developing (TD) adults. Compared to the TD group, the ASD group showed reduced N400 effects for both linguistic and visual narratives, suggesting comprehension impairments for both types of narratives and thereby implicating a more domain-general impairment. Based on these results, we propose that individuals with ASD use a more bottom-up style of processing during narrative comprehension.

Listening beyond seeing: Event-related potentials to audiovisual processing in visual narrative

Every day we integrate meaningful information coming from different sensory modalities, and previous work has debated whether conceptual knowledge is represented in modality-specific neural stores specialized for specific types of information, and/or in an amodal, shared system. In the current study, we investigated semantic processing through a cross-modal paradigm which asked whether auditory semantic processing could be modulated by the constraints of context built up across a meaningful visual narrative sequence. We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to auditory words and sounds associated to events in visual narratives-i.e., seeing images of someone spitting while hearing either a word (Spitting!) or a sound (the sound of spitting)-which were either semantically congruent or incongruent with the climactic visual event. Our results showed that both incongruent sounds and words evoked an N400 effect, however, the distribution of the N400 effect to words (centro-parietal) differed from that of sounds (frontal). In addition, words had an earlier latency N400 than sounds. Despite these differences, a sustained late frontal negativity followed the N400s and did not differ between modalities. These results support the idea that semantic memory balances a distributed cortical network accessible from multiple modalities, yet also engages amodal processing insensitive to specific modalities.

Mixed metaphors: Electrophysiological brain responses to (un)expected concrete and abstract prepositional phrases

Languages around the world use spatial terminology, like prepositions, to describe non-spatial, abstract concepts, including time (e.g., in the moment). The Metaphoric Mapping Theory explains this pattern by positing that a universal human cognitive process underlies it, whereby abstract concepts are conceptualized via the application of concrete, three-dimensional space onto abstract domains. The alternative view is that the use of spatial propositions in abstract phrases is idiomatic, and thus does not trigger metaphoric mapping. In the current study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the time-course of neural processing of concrete and abstract phrases consisting of the prepositions in or on followed by congruent and incongruent nouns (e.g., in the bowl/plate and in the moment/mend). ERPs were recorded from the onset of reference nouns in 28 adult participants using a 128-channel electrode net. Results show that congruency has differential effects on neural measures, depending on whether the noun is concrete or abstract. Incongruent reference nouns in concrete phrases (e.g., on the bowl) elicited a significant central negativity (an N400 effect), while incongruent reference nouns in abstract phrases (e.g., on the moment) did not. These results suggest that spatially incongruent concrete nouns are semantically unexpected (N400 effect). A P600 effect, which might indicate rechecking, reanalysis and/or reconstruction, was predicted for incongruent abstract nouns, but was not observed, possibly due to the variability in abstract stimuli. Findings cast doubt on accounts claiming that abstract uses of prepositions are cognitively and metaphorically linked to their spatial sense during natural, on-line processing.

The visual framing of graphics when used in preventative health digital news packages: exploring the use of a narrative structure as the message infrastructure

Visual framing can improve health-message effectiveness. Narrative structure provides a template needed for determining how to frame visuals to maximise message effectiveness. Participants (N = 190) were assigned to a message condition determined by segments (establisher, initial, peak), graphic (static, animated) and cancer (lung, melanoma). ANOVAs revealed that melanoma was more believable than lung cancer with static graphics at the establisher and peak; narratives were more believable with animated graphics at the peak segment; melanoma elicited greater positive attitudes; graphics in the peak influenced greatest intentions. Animated graphics visually framed to emphasise information at the establisher and peak segments suggest maximum effectiveness.

Not so secret agents: Event-related potentials to semantic roles in visual event comprehension

Research across domains has suggested that agents, the doers of actions, have a processing advantage over patients, the receivers of actions. We hypothesized that agents as "event builders" for discrete actions (e.g., throwing a ball, punching) build on cues embedded in their preparatory postures (e.g., reaching back an arm to throw or punch) that lead to (predictable) culminating actions, and that these cues afford frontloading of event structure processing. To test this hypothesis, we compared event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to averbal comic panels depicting preparatory agents (ex. reaching back an arm to punch) that cued specific actions with those to non-preparatory agents (ex. arm to the side) and patients that did not cue any specific actions. We also compared subsequent completed action panels (ex. agent punching patient) across conditions, where we expected an inverse pattern of ERPs indexing the differential costs of processing completed actions asa function of preparatory cues. Preparatory agents evoked a greater frontal positivity (600-900ms) relative to non-preparatory agents and patients, while subsequent completed actions panels following non-preparatory agents elicited a smaller frontal positivity (600-900ms). These results suggest that preparatory (vs. non-) postures may differentially impact the processing of agents and subsequent actions in real time.

What is your neural function, visual narrative conjunction? Grammar, meaning, and fluency in sequential image processing

Visual narratives sometimes depict successive images with different characters in the same physical space; corpus analysis has revealed that this occurs more often in Japanese manga than American comics. We used event-related brain potentials to determine whether comprehension of "visual narrative conjunctions" invokes not only incremental mental updating as traditionally assumed, but also, as we propose, "grammatical" combinatoric processing. We thus crossed (non)/conjunction sequences with character (in)/congruity. Conjunctions elicited a larger anterior negativity (300-500 ms) than nonconjunctions, regardless of congruity, implicating "grammatical" processes. Conjunction and incongruity both elicited larger P600s (500-700 ms), indexing updating. Both conjunction effects were modulated by participants' frequency of reading manga while growing up. Greater anterior negativity in frequent manga readers suggests more reliance on combinatoric processing; larger P600 effects in infrequent manga readers suggest more resources devoted to mental updating. As in language comprehension, it seems that processing conjunctions in visual narratives is not just mental updating but also partly grammatical, conditioned by comic readers' experience with specific visual narrative structures.

When a hit sounds like a kiss: An electrophysiological exploration of semantic processing in visual narrative

Researchers have long questioned whether information presented through different sensory modalities involves distinct or shared semantic systems. We investigated uni-sensory cross-modal processing by recording event-related brain potentials to words replacing the climactic event in a visual narrative sequence (comics). We compared Onomatopoeic words, which phonetically imitate action sounds (Pow!), with Descriptive words, which describe an action (Punch!), that were (in)congruent within their sequence contexts. Across two experiments, larger N400s appeared to Anomalous Onomatopoeic or Descriptive critical panels than to their congruent counterparts, reflecting a difficulty in semantic access/retrieval. Also, Descriptive words evinced a greater late frontal positivity compared to Onomatopoetic words, suggesting that, though plausible, they may be less predictable/expected in visual narratives. Our results indicate that uni-sensory cross-model integration of word/letter-symbol strings within visual narratives elicit ERP patterns typically observed for written sentence processing, thereby suggesting the engagement of similar domain-independent integration/interpretation mechanisms.

Drawing the line between constituent structure and coherence relations in visual narratives

Theories of visual narrative understanding have often focused on the changes in meaning across a sequence, like shifts in characters, spatial location, and causation, as cues for breaks in the structure of a discourse. In contrast, the theory of visual narrative grammar posits that hierarchic "grammatical" structures operate at the discourse level using categorical roles for images, which may or may not co-occur with shifts in coherence. We therefore examined the relationship between narrative structure and coherence shifts in the segmentation of visual narrative sequences using a "segmentation task" where participants drew lines between images in order to divide them into subepisodes. We used regressions to analyze the influence of the expected constituent structure boundary, narrative categories, and semantic coherence relationships on the segmentation of visual narrative sequences. Narrative categories were a stronger predictor of segmentation than linear coherence relationships between panels, though both influenced participants' divisions. Altogether, these results support the theory that meaningful sequential images use a narrative grammar that extends above and beyond linear semantic shifts between discourse units. (PsycINFO Database Record

When expectancies collide: Action dynamics reveal the interaction between stimulus plausibility and congruency

The cognitive architecture routinely relies on expectancy mechanisms to process the plausibility of stimuli and establish their sequential congruency. In two computer mouse-tracking experiments, we use a cross-modal verification task to uncover the interaction between plausibility and congruency by examining their temporal signatures of activation competition as expressed in a computer- mouse movement decision response. In this task, participants verified the content congruency of sentence and scene pairs that varied in plausibility. The order of presentation (sentence-scene, scene-sentence) was varied between participants to uncover any differential processing. Our results show that implausible but congruent stimuli triggered less accurate and slower responses than implausible and incongruent stimuli, and were associated with more complex angular mouse trajectories independent of the order of presentation. This study provides novel evidence of a disassociation between the temporal signatures of plausibility and congruency detection on decision responses.

The pieces fit: Constituent structure and global coherence of visual narrative in RSVP

Recent research has shown that comprehension of visual narrative relies on the ordering and timing of sequential images. Here we tested if rapidly presented 6-image long visual sequences could be understood as coherent narratives. Half of the sequences were correctly ordered and half had two of the four internal panels switched. Participants reported whether the sequence was correctly ordered and rated its coherence. Accuracy in detecting a switch increased when panels were presented for 1 s rather than 0.5 s. Doubling the duration of the first panel did not affect results. When two switched panels were further apart, order was discriminated more accurately and coherence ratings were low, revealing that a strong local adjacency effect influenced order and coherence judgments. Switched panels at constituent boundaries or within constituents were most disruptive to order discrimination, indicating that the preservation of constituent structure is critical to visual narrative grammar.

Action starring narratives and events: Structure and inference in visual narrative comprehension

Studies of discourse have long placed focus on the inference generated by information that is not overtly expressed, and theories of visual narrative comprehension similarly focused on the inference generated between juxtaposed panels. Within the visual language of comics, star-shaped "flashes" commonly signify impacts, but can be enlarged to the size of a whole panel that can omit all other representational information. These "action star" panels depict a narrative culmination (a "Peak"), but have content which readers must infer, thereby posing a challenge to theories of inference generation in visual narratives that focus only on the semantic changes between juxtaposed images. This paper shows that action stars demand more inference than depicted events, and that they are more coherent in narrative sequences than scrambled sequences (Experiment 1). In addition, action stars play a felicitous narrative role in the sequence (Experiment 2). Together, these results suggest that visual narratives use conventionalized depictions that demand the generation of inferences while retaining narrative coherence of a visual sequence.