Manga Story Reading Study: fMRI and Empathy Data on Paper vs. Tablet Effects

Keita Umejima's 5.5 KB dataset from figshare examines the neuroscientific mechanisms of reading comprehension across media. It contains behavioral and fMRI data from an experiment where participants read Japanese manga stories in halves on paper or tablets, providing continuous empathy ratings. The data, last updated in June 2026, shows prospective effects where reading on paper facilitated narrative integration and saved excessive frontal lobe activations compared to tablet reading.

Use Cases

• Compare neural activation patterns for reading comprehension based on the paper versus tablet preparatory conditions described.
• Analyze response time differences for story comprehension questions based on the Set 1 and Set 2 question types mentioned.
• Investigate correlations between frontal lobe activations and individual accuracy rates based on the fMRI results for the Tablet condition.
• Study the relationship between continuous empathy ratings and narrative perspective shifts described in the manga story format.

Strengths

• Dataset is openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0, permitting broad reuse.
• Experimental design is detailed, involving fMRI scanning, two reading media conditions, and two sets of comprehension questions.
• Data file is small (5.5 KB), facilitating quick download and initial inspection.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset's scale is tiny (5.5 KB), indicating very limited scope, likely summary statistics rather than raw trial data.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Keita Umejima.

Collection Method

Collected via a controlled experiment involving fMRI scanning and behavioral tasks during manga story reading.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-03 17:24:49; freshness should be verified.