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RE: Visual language and comics
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 17:24:04 -0400
Just a word of caution regarding the Neil Cohn research. This is speculative investigation. It is not research that backs up practice. I have no issue with comics as one among many forms of reading but we still know surprisingly little about the causes or effects of reading, including reading comics. This study is just one among many relatively inconclusive studies which is intriguing and possibly indicative but meaningless in terms of answering any of the questions we might be interested in. (Is comic reading cognitively beneficial and if so in what ways? Does reading comics reinforce the habit of reading? Is reading comics equally cognitively stimulating as reading straight text? Etc.)
All this particular research demonstrates is that the brain appears to process comics using the same neurological tools or pathways as it does for processing regular text. It says nothing about the content that is being processed or the cognitive outcomes or the relative benefits of one form of reading versus another. Keep in mind that Chomsky’s theories, which have been around for more than half a century, are themselves still hotly disputed.
A final reason for caution, psychology as a field has one of the highest rates of non-replication of research. Indeed, earlier this year, in a special edition of the journal Social Psychology, the editors sponsored an effort that attempted to replicate 27 propositions fundamental to the field. (See Why Psychologists’ Food Fight Matters <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/07/replication_controversy_in_psychology_bullying_file_drawer_effect_blog_posts.single.html> by Michelle N. Meyer and Christopher Chabris for a report of the issues; it is an article well worth reading)
“The results were sobering. At least 10 of the 27 “important findings” in social psychology were not replicated at all. In the social priming area, only one of seven replications succeeded.”
And those are core assumptions which were widely accepted as true, not frontier research like Cohn’s.
For good science, you want large sample sizes (thousands), longitudinal stretch, randomly selected participants (not just self-selected volunteers) from a varied population (not just middle class psychology students), null hypotheses, rigorous structure (double blind, etc.) and replication. All of that is absent here. In terms of answering the question whether there is value in reading comics, this does nothing to advance the conversation. The preexisting pros and cons are extant.
Charles
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Received on Wed 10 Sep 2014 04:25:31 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 17:24:04 -0400
Just a word of caution regarding the Neil Cohn research. This is speculative investigation. It is not research that backs up practice. I have no issue with comics as one among many forms of reading but we still know surprisingly little about the causes or effects of reading, including reading comics. This study is just one among many relatively inconclusive studies which is intriguing and possibly indicative but meaningless in terms of answering any of the questions we might be interested in. (Is comic reading cognitively beneficial and if so in what ways? Does reading comics reinforce the habit of reading? Is reading comics equally cognitively stimulating as reading straight text? Etc.)
All this particular research demonstrates is that the brain appears to process comics using the same neurological tools or pathways as it does for processing regular text. It says nothing about the content that is being processed or the cognitive outcomes or the relative benefits of one form of reading versus another. Keep in mind that Chomsky’s theories, which have been around for more than half a century, are themselves still hotly disputed.
A final reason for caution, psychology as a field has one of the highest rates of non-replication of research. Indeed, earlier this year, in a special edition of the journal Social Psychology, the editors sponsored an effort that attempted to replicate 27 propositions fundamental to the field. (See Why Psychologists’ Food Fight Matters <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/07/replication_controversy_in_psychology_bullying_file_drawer_effect_blog_posts.single.html> by Michelle N. Meyer and Christopher Chabris for a report of the issues; it is an article well worth reading)
“The results were sobering. At least 10 of the 27 “important findings” in social psychology were not replicated at all. In the social priming area, only one of seven replications succeeded.”
And those are core assumptions which were widely accepted as true, not frontier research like Cohn’s.
For good science, you want large sample sizes (thousands), longitudinal stretch, randomly selected participants (not just self-selected volunteers) from a varied population (not just middle class psychology students), null hypotheses, rigorous structure (double blind, etc.) and replication. All of that is absent here. In terms of answering the question whether there is value in reading comics, this does nothing to advance the conversation. The preexisting pros and cons are extant.
Charles
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Received on Wed 10 Sep 2014 04:25:31 PM CDT
