ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a typology of combining information and narration in science comics, which serves as the basis for selecting different types of comics as experimental stimuli. It also presents empirical results from eye tracking and the two knowledge tests which are interpreted in light of typical features of information comics. The chapter relates to the empirical study of comics first rests on focusing on a rarely examined, but currently prominent, type of comics–namely, information comics. Based on test results, one can identify four comprehension problems, which are typical of information comics: informational inference and propositional content, intermodal text-image-relation, discourse coherence, and sequential navigation–overlap. The chapter demonstrates a methodology of combining eye tracking and knowledge testing to investigate the achievements of comics in knowledge transfer and science communication. Eye-tracking research has been applied to the medium of comics in several studies to reveal its specific reading processes and the compositional sense-making of text and image combinations.
