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What is the role of the film viewer? The effects of narrative comprehension and viewing task on gaze control in film

Overview of attention for article published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, November 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (86th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (75th percentile)

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1 blog
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6 X users

Citations

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38 Dimensions

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73 Mendeley
Title
What is the role of the film viewer? The effects of narrative comprehension and viewing task on gaze control in film
Published in
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, November 2017
DOI 10.1186/s41235-017-0080-5
Pubmed ID
Authors

John P. Hutson, Tim J. Smith, Joseph P. Magliano, Lester C. Loschky

Abstract

Film is ubiquitous, but the processes that guide viewers' attention while viewing film narratives are poorly understood. In fact, many film theorists and practitioners disagree on whether the film stimulus (bottom-up) or the viewer (top-down) is more important in determining how we watch movies. Reading research has shown a strong connection between eye movements and comprehension, and scene perception studies have shown strong effects of viewing tasks on eye movements, but such idiosyncratic top-down control of gaze in film would be anathema to the universal control mainstream filmmakers typically aim for. Thus, in two experiments we tested whether the eye movements and comprehension relationship similarly held in a classic film example, the famous opening scene of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (Welles & Zugsmith, Touch of Evil, 1958). Comprehension differences were compared with more volitionally controlled task-based effects on eye movements. To investigate the effects of comprehension on eye movements during film viewing, we manipulated viewers' comprehension by starting participants at different points in a film, and then tracked their eyes. Overall, the manipulation created large differences in comprehension, but only produced modest differences in eye movements. To amplify top-down effects on eye movements, a task manipulation was designed to prioritize peripheral scene features: a map task. This task manipulation created large differences in eye movements when compared to participants freely viewing the clip for comprehension. Thus, to allow for strong, volitional top-down control of eye movements in film, task manipulations need to make features that are important to narrative comprehension irrelevant to the viewing task. The evidence provided by this experimental case study suggests that filmmakers' belief in their ability to create systematic gaze behavior across viewers is confirmed, but that this does not indicate universally similar comprehension of the film narrative.

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X Demographics

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 73 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 73 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 13 18%
Student > Master 9 12%
Researcher 7 10%
Student > Bachelor 3 4%
Student > Postgraduate 3 4%
Other 12 16%
Unknown 26 36%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 13 18%
Arts and Humanities 6 8%
Computer Science 5 7%
Linguistics 4 5%
Neuroscience 4 5%
Other 11 15%
Unknown 30 41%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 12. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 December 2017.
All research outputs
#2,905,529
of 25,035,235 outputs
Outputs from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
#118
of 358 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#60,510
of 449,768 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
#3
of 8 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,035,235 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 88th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 358 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 43.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 449,768 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 8 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 5 of them.