Reading comics: The effect of expertise on eye movements

Abstract

The theory of expertise suggests that there should be observable differences in the eye movement patterns between experts and non-experts. Previous studies have investigated how expertise influences eye movement patterns during cognitive tasks like reading. However, the impact of expertise on eye movements in comics, a multimodal form of text, remains unexplored. This article reports on a study that uses eye tracking to examine patterns in the ways that experts and non-experts read comics. Expert participants (14) with experience in reading comics than non-expert participants (17). When controlling for variables such as layout and text quantity, we found significant differences in visual scanning between experts and non-experts. Experts exhibited more frequent saccades and greater amplitude of saccades. Further analysis revealed distinct strategies in processing text and image content between the two groups: the interaction between expertise level and content type in specific AOI showed significant differences across multiple visual measurement metrics, including Average duration of fixations, number of fixations, and number of saccades within AOI. These findings not only support the applicability of the expertise level theory in the field of comic reading but also provide a new perspective for understanding the reading processing of multimodal texts.