Elucidation of Individual Difference in Manga Reading Based on Gaze Measurement

Abstract

All our actions, no matter how seemingly insignificant, hint at our personal traits, from aspects of our personalities and cultural backgrounds to indications of our biological humanity. Cognitive phycologist Dr Yuichi Wada, studies a unique, culturally embedded phenomenon in Japan known as reading manga, and he decodes its meaning on a universally human level, uncovering how interpreting sentences and pictures signifies cognitive information related to language and empathy. Manga, or Japanese comic books, are a world renown form of media, commonly found in book shops internationally and translated to the television screen. They tell vibrant stories and convey varying points of view, using both graphics and words to depict narratives. Despite being an important facet of Japanese culture, there have not been any studies focused on our visual exploration of the art, tying it to a psychological perspective. Manga is particularly important to study in this regard because of the richness of information it provides to the reader. Wada, through investigation of eye movement patterns during the free reading of the comics believes that he can associate physical indictors with personality traits. As such a popular media with a lively fanbase, his work will be fascinating for not only researchers in psychology, but also the everyday reader and lover of manga.