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Bridging a Gap in Coherence: The Coordination of Comprehension Processes When Viewing Visual Narratives
Maverick E Smith1,2, John P Hutson2,3, Mi'Kayla Newell3
1Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Vision (Basel, Switzerland)
|September 23, 2024
Summary
Understanding picture stories involves mapping information and segmenting events. Coherence gaps influence how these processes coordinate, impacting comprehension and explanation generation.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Visual Perception
- Narrative Comprehension
Background:
- Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) explains understanding picture stories through mapping and shifting processes.
- Mapping involves integrating information coherently, while shifting segments experiences into distinct event models.
- The interplay between generating bridging inferences (mapping) and event segmentation (shifting) is crucial for comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how viewers coordinate mapping and shifting processes when coherence gaps are manipulated.
- To test competing hypotheses: Computational Effort Hypothesis vs. Coherence Gap Resolution Hypothesis.
- To examine the relationship between event segmentation and explanation generation in the presence and absence of bridging actions.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments using wordless picture stories with and without Bridging Action pictures to create coherence gaps.
- Manipulating the presence or absence of Bridging Action pictures to influence coherence and inference generation.
- Analyzing the relationship between event segmentation and the production of explanations.
Main Results:
- Viewers were more likely to segment events and generate explanations when Bridging Action pictures were absent.
- A negative relationship between segmentation and explanations was observed when coherence gaps were present (Bridging Actions absent), supporting the Coherence Gap Resolution Hypothesis.
- An unexpected positive relationship between segmentation and explanations occurred when Bridging Actions were present.
Conclusions:
- Results support SPECT's premise that mapping and shifting processes are coordinated.
- The coordination between mapping and shifting is dynamically influenced by the experience of coherence gaps.
- The findings highlight the adaptive nature of comprehension strategies in response to narrative structure.
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