Visual features that repeat across cuts guide attention in movies

Autor(en)

Christian Valuch, Peter König, Ulrich Ansorge

Abstrakt

Movies contain cuts, i.e. abrupt transitions from one image to the next. Research suggests that 'continuity editing' masks cuts. For instance, within-scene cuts (WSCs) have a higher visual similarity of pre-cut and post-cut images and are more difficult to spot than between-scene cuts (BSCs). Here, we tested whether visual attention plays a role in this effect: Is attention attracted by features that repeat across cuts? We deliberately inserted WSCs and BSCs in a set of 20 sports movies. A comparison of feature distributions verified higher similarity in WSCs than BSCs. Participants saw two different movies side by side on a single computer screen. In the first experiment a cue defined the target movie that participants had to attend to. When a cut occurred the movies were stopped for a filler task. Afterwards the movies continued either at the same positions, or switched positions. Saccades to the target movie were initiated significantly faster and saccades to the wrong movie were less frequent following WSCs as compared to BSCs. In the second experiment, participants fixated the screen center and only covertly attended to the target movie, without moving their eyes. Following each cut, we briefly flashed digits on both movies and participants manually reported the identity of the digit on the target movie. Again, performance was significantly better after WSCs than BSCs. In both experiments, we also found that repeating the position of the target movie strongly improved performance on top of the facilitative effect of visual feature repetition. We discuss our results with regard to intertrial priming of attention, usually studied with simpler and better controlled displays, but probably the process responsible for the continuity effect.

Organisation(en)

Forschungsverbund Kognitionswissenschaft, Institut für Psychologie der Kognition, Emotion und Methoden

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Osnabrück

Journal

Journal of Vision

Band

14

ISSN

1534-7362

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1167/14.10.375

Publikationsdatum

2014

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

501026 Wahrnehmungspsychologie

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/visual-features-that-repeat-across-cuts-guide-attention-in-movies(5a920cab-deb0-417d-bee3-10fc296d3abd).html