Bärbel Garsoffky

Do film cuts facilitate the perceptual and cognitive organization of activitiy sequences

Film depictions of activities possess two kinds of structures—namely, the structural features of the depicted activities themselves and a formal structure defined by film cuts. The former structure is used by everyday observers for perceptually and cognitively unitizing the continuous flow of events into comprehensible entities. It seems conceivable that cuts can serve a similar unitizing purpose for film viewers. For each of two different activity sequences, two film versions were produced. Throughout each film version, cuts were placed either at breakpoints or at nonbreakpoints. In a 2 × 2 (activity sequence × film version) factorial design, 40 subjects segmentation behavior depended primarily on the occurrence of breakpoints and was largely unaffected by the occurrence of cuts. Cuts accompanying a breakpoint lead to more detailed recall protocols for these sections of the film.

Narrative-based learning: Possible benefits and problems

Abstract This paper addresses the issue of narrative influence on knowledge acquisition in science education. Special characteristics of narratives and of narrative processing are compared to characteristics and processing of traditional expository educational materials. This paper goes beyond the existing literature on processing of media presentations that combine narrative and educational contents. Effects of four distinctive narrative features – dramatization, emotionalization, personalization, and fictionalization – are discussed with regard to their influence on single steps in knowledge acquisition (interest, attention, elaboration, and representation) to explain the superiority of narratives over expository material found in some studies. The need for a model describing the complex relationships between the effects of the single narrative characteristics on knowledge acquisition is proposed.

The relationship between formal filmic means and the segmentation behavior of film viewers

The present study addressed the question of whether formal filmic means (e.g., cuts) serve a syntactic function for the viewers by guiding them in segmenting the continuous flow of events depicted in the film. Three films depicting complex production processes were shown to 48 apprentices. We adopted a procedure developed by Newtson (1973) in which participants were required to segment the film content by pressing a button each time a production step ended and a new one began. Results show that the occurrence of either visual or auditory formal filmic means led to an increase in the proportion of segmentations. Also, formal filmic means indicating a change of scene elicited more marked segmentation behavior than formal filmic means indicating minor changes within scenes. No general effect on segmentation behavior could be found for the spectators’ expertise for the depicted film content.

Fandom biases retrospective judgments not perception

Attitudes and motivations have been shown to affect the processing of visual input, indicating that observers may see a given situation each literally in a different way. Yet, in real-life, processing information in an unbiased manner is considered to be of high adaptive value. Attitudinal and motivational effects were found for attention, characterization, categorization, and memory. On the other hand, for dynamic real-life events, visual processing has been found to be highly synchronous among viewers. Thus, while in a seminal study fandom as a particularly strong case of attitudes did bias judgments of a sports event, it left the question open whether attitudes do bias prior processing stages. Here, we investigated influences of fandom during the live TV broadcasting of the 2013 UEFA-Champions-League Final regarding attention, event segmentation, immediate and delayed cued recall, as well as affect, memory confidence, and retrospective judgments. Even though we replicated biased retrospective judgments, we found that eye-movements, event segmentation, and cued recall were largely similar across both groups of fans. Our findings demonstrate that, while highly involving sports events are interpreted in a fan dependent way, at initial stages they are processed in an unbiased manner.

A catch-up illusion arising from a distance-dependent perception bias in judging relative movement

The perception of relative target movement from a dynamic observer is an unexamined psychological three body problem. To test the applicability of explanations for two moving bodies participants repeatedly judged the relative movements of two runners chasing each other in video clips displayed on a stationary screen. The chased person always ran at 3 m/s with an observer camera following or leading at 4.5, 3, 1.5 or 0 m/s. We harmonized the chaser speed in an adaptive staircase to determine the point of subjective equal movement speed between runners and observed (i) an underestimation of chaser speed if the runners moved towards the viewer, and (ii) an overestimation of chaser speed if the runners moved away from the viewer, leading to a catch-up illusion in case of equidistant runners. The bias was independent of the richness of available self-movement cues. Results are inconsistent with computing individual speeds, relying on constant visual angles, expansion rates, occlusions, or relative distances but are consistent with inducing the impression of relative movement through perceptually compressing and enlarging inter-runner distance. This mechanism should be considered when predicting human behavior in complex situations with multiple objects moving in depth such as driving or team sports.

Mind the gap: Temporal discontinuities in observed activity streams influence perceived duration of actions

In everyday life, when observing activities taking place in our environment, we often shift our attention among several activities and therefore perceive each activity sequence piecemeal with temporal gaps in between. Two studies examined whether the length of these gaps influences the processing of the observed activities. Experiment 1 presented film clips depicting activities that were interrupted by either short or long gaps and asked participants to estimate how long the target action presented at the end of the clip would normally take if it were to take place in reality. Using the same activities, Experiment 2 asked participants to judge the duration of the presentation of this target action—that is, how long the target action was presented. Results showed that following long gaps instead of short gaps, target actions are estimated to take longer in reality (Experiment 1), but the depictions themselves are estimated to be shorter (Experiment 2). Following long gaps, target actions seem to be processed pars pro toto as placeholders for longer segments in the stream of events, but in contrast, the depictions themselves appear to be shorter. Results suggest that long gaps lengthen the perceived duration of an event in our cognitive representation and also seem to influence our perception of the duration of the presentation itself.

The influence of a moving camera on the perception of distances between moving objects

Movies and especially animations, where cameras can move nearly without any restriction, often use moving cameras, thereby intensifying continuity [Bor02] and influencing the impression of cinematic space [Jon07]. Further studies effectively use moving cameras to explore perception and processing of real world action [HUGG14]. But what is the influence of simultaneous multiple movements of actors and camera on basic perception and understanding of film sequences? It seems reasonable to expect that understanding of object movement is easiest from a static viewpoint, but that nevertheless moving viewpoints can be partialed out during perception.