|
Neil Cohn is an American cognitive scientist and comic author. His research offers the first serious scientific study of the cognition of understanding comics, and uses an interdisciplinary approach combining aspects of theoretical and corpus linguistics with cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.〔(Zimmer, Carl. 2012. The Charlie Brown Effect: A comic book-artist turned-neuroscientist says the images in Peanuts tap the same brain processes as sentences. ''Discover Magazine''. Pp. 68-70 )〕〔(Robson, David. 2013. How the visual language of comics could have its roots in the ice age. ''The Guardian''. November 23, 2013 )〕 Cohn’s work argues that common cognitive capacities underlie the processing of various expressive domains, especially verbal and signed languages and what he calls “visual language”—the structure and cognition of drawings and visual narratives, particularly those found in comics. Cohn spent several years as an independent scholar before studying under linguist Ray Jackendoff and psychologists Gina Kuperberg and Phillip Holcomb at Tufts University where he received his PhD in psychology in 2012. Since graduating, he has been a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego working with Marta Kutas and Jeff Elman. He is the son of Leigh Cohn and Lindsey Hall. ==Visual Language Theory== Cohn’s work challenges many of the existing conceptions of both language and drawing. He argues that language involves an interaction between an expressive modality, meaning, and a grammar. Just as sign languages differ from gestures in that they use a vocabulary and grammar, “visual languages” differ from individual drawings because they have a vocabulary of patterned graphic representations and a grammar constraining the coherence of sequential images. Full visual languages primarily appear alongside written languages in comics of the world, though they also appear outside of comics, such as in sand drawings used by Australian Aboriginals.〔Cohn, Neil. 2013. ''The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images''. London: Bloomsbury.〕 Just as spoken languages differ, so do visual languages: Japanese manga are written in “Japanese Visual Language” while American comics are written in “American Visual Language.” In addition, Cohn has argued that the development of visual languages may follow similar constraints as learning spoken and signed languages, and that most people do not learn how to draw proficiently because they do not acquire visual vocabularies within a critical period.〔(Cohn, Neil. 2012. Explaining “I can’t draw”: Parallels between the structure and development of language and drawing. ''Human Development''. 55(4): 167-192 )〕 Cohn’s primary research program with visual language theory emphasizes that a narrative structure operates as a “grammar” to sequential images analogously to syntactic structure in sentences. While narrative grammar uses a discourse level of information, its function and structure is similar to syntax in that it organizes categorical roles in hierarchic constituents in order to express meaning. While this research has only begun recently, Cohn’s initial work in cognitive neuroscience has suggested that manipulation of this narrative grammar elicits similar brain responses as manipulations of syntax in language (i.e. N400, P600, and Left Anterior Negativity effects).〔(Cohn, Neil. 2013. Visual narrative structure. ''Cognitive Science''. 37(3): 413-452 )〕〔(Cohn, Neil, Martin Paczynski, Ray Jackendoff, Phillip Holcomb, and Gina Kuperberg. 2012. (Pea)nuts and bolts of visual narratives: Structure and meaning in sequential image comprehension. ''Cognitive Psychology''. 65(1): 1-38 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Neil Cohn」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|