Exploring the affordances of text and picture stories

ABSTRACT

We often talk about our narrative experiences with others. For example, we might talk about the latest TV show or book in a series with friends. How does the media of a narrative (text, picture story) affect how we talk about it? Despite the fact that narratives can be experienced across different media, few studies have addressed the impacts of varied media. This study explored similarities and differences in how narratives are experienced across text and sequential picture stories. Picture and text versions were used for the same stories. Participants (n = 132) engaged in a think-aloud task at specific story units and provided ongoing think-aloud responses while reading or viewing. Natural language processing analyses were then conducted on the think-aloud responses. Results indicated that participants produced more words reflecting the internal states of characters and causality when reading than when viewing picture stories. Conversely, they produced more place words when viewing picture stories than reading text. Implications for theory and future directions are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The study involves archival data that was collected based on a power analysis for the media and coherence break manipulation (Troemel et al., 2023).

2. The think-aloud locations were chosen based on the presence of the manipulation of a coherence gap, which occurred immediately prior to the story units where the think allowed prompts occurred.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by IES Grant R305A190063 as well as by the Bonnie Westby Huebner Chair in Education & Technology awarded to L. K. Allen from the University of Minnesota. Opinions, conclusions, or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the view of the IES.