Comprehending action in depicted paths: Evidence from the cognition of motion lines in visual narratives

Motion lines depict the path of a moving object, most popularly in comics. Some have argued that motion lines depict the “streaks” in the visual system when a viewer tracks an object (Burr, 2000). However, previous research has not used motion lines’ natural context of comics, has only depicted a limited number of actions (usually just running), and used only offline measurements like recall or ratings. Here, we compared panels in comic strips with normal motion lines and those depicting either no lines or reversed, anomalous lines. In Experiment 1, images with normal lines were faster than no lines, which were viewed faster than anomalous lines. In Experiment 2, ERPs showed that the absence of normal lines elicited a posterior positivity distinct from the frontal positivity evoked by the presence of anomalous lines. These results suggest that motion lines aid in the comprehension of depicted events as conventionalized visual signs.