ERIC Number: EJ1336868
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-May
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1551-6709
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Narrative Comprehension Guides Eye Movements in the Absence of Motion
Hutson, John P.; Chandran, Prasanth; Magliano, Joseph P.; Smith, Tim J.; Loschky, Lester C.
Cognitive Science, v46 n5 e13131 May 2022
Viewers' attentional selection while looking at scenes is affected by both top-down and bottom-up factors. However, when watching film, viewers typically attend to the movie similarly irrespective of top-down factors--a phenomenon we call the "tyranny of film." A key difference between still pictures and film is that film contains motion, which is a strong attractor of attention and highly predictive of gaze during film viewing. The goal of the present study was to test if the tyranny of film is driven by motion. To do this, we created a slideshow presentation of the opening scene of "Touch of Evil." "Context" condition participants watched the full slideshow. "No-context" condition participants did not see the opening portion of the scene, which showed someone placing a time bomb into the trunk of a car. In prior research, we showed that despite producing very different understandings of the clip, this manipulation did not affect viewers' attention (i.e., the tyranny of film), as both context and no-context participants were equally likely to fixate on the car with the bomb when the scene was presented as a film. The current study found that when the scene was shown as a slideshow, the context manipulation produced differences in attentional selection (i.e., it attenuated attentional synchrony). We discuss these results in the context of the Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory, which specifies the relationship between event comprehension and attentional selection in the context of visual narratives.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A