Super fascinating! I'd love to see this study done specifically for comics.
Questions I have:
- What device(s) were used for the digital presentation? I wonder if there is a difference between reading on an iPad vs a computer screen.
- It looks like the performance metric was "stickiness." I wonder if, for non-academic reading of fiction, that is actually always a positive, especially for comfort readers.
Also, as an aside, based on my classroom experience, I anticipate this study will be used as evidence for removing tech from classrooms. This has a LOT of implications for a study with such a small sample size (and I assume it was conducted on the usual college-age cohort).
As always, thanks for bringing the cool stuff to the forefront!
Thanks for reading, Greg. I'll do my best to answer the questions, as they're good ones.
They used a tablet with the file in a PDF format for the digital arm of the study (set to display a single page at a time). The forced condition was useful for comparison, but not realistic given that people may choose to zoom in (for example) which I think would have an impact.
Their second question focused on whether there were differences in total fixation duration for different types of diagrams between digital and print. I think the stickiness measure can be helpful or not, depending on the situation, but I was trying to interpret what it may mean for comic creators - a full study using comics would of course be the preferred solution.
The cohort mean age was 20.8 years, and they also had to have eyesight within a certain range, but otherwise was pulled from an undergraduate class.
Super fascinating! I'd love to see this study done specifically for comics.
Questions I have:
- What device(s) were used for the digital presentation? I wonder if there is a difference between reading on an iPad vs a computer screen.
- It looks like the performance metric was "stickiness." I wonder if, for non-academic reading of fiction, that is actually always a positive, especially for comfort readers.
Also, as an aside, based on my classroom experience, I anticipate this study will be used as evidence for removing tech from classrooms. This has a LOT of implications for a study with such a small sample size (and I assume it was conducted on the usual college-age cohort).
As always, thanks for bringing the cool stuff to the forefront!
Thanks for reading, Greg. I'll do my best to answer the questions, as they're good ones.
They used a tablet with the file in a PDF format for the digital arm of the study (set to display a single page at a time). The forced condition was useful for comparison, but not realistic given that people may choose to zoom in (for example) which I think would have an impact.
Their second question focused on whether there were differences in total fixation duration for different types of diagrams between digital and print. I think the stickiness measure can be helpful or not, depending on the situation, but I was trying to interpret what it may mean for comic creators - a full study using comics would of course be the preferred solution.
The cohort mean age was 20.8 years, and they also had to have eyesight within a certain range, but otherwise was pulled from an undergraduate class.