The Kuleshov Effect: the influence of contextual framing on emotional attributions

Abstract

Filmmakers have long recognized the importance of editing techniques to guide the audiences' perceptions and enhance the impact of a scene. We demonstrate behaviorally that pairing identical faces with either neutral or emotionally salient contextual movies, an editing technique referred to as the 'Kuleshov Effect', results in both altered attributions of facial expression and mental-state. Using functional neuroimaging (fMRI), we show that faces paired with emotional movies enhance BOLD responses in the bilateral temporal pole, anterior cingulate cortices, amygdala and bilateral superior temporal sulcus relative to identical faces juxtaposed with neutral movies. An interaction was observed in the right amygdala when subtle happy and fear faces were juxtaposed with positive and negative movies, respectively. An interaction between happy faces and negative context was also observed in bilateral amygdala suggesting that the amygdala may act to prime or tag affective value to faces. A parametric modulation of BOLD signal by attribution ratings indicated a dissociation between ventrolateral and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for negative and positive contextually evoked attributions, respectively. These prefrontal regions may act to guide appropriate choices across altering contexts. Together, these findings offer a neurobiological basis for contextual framing effects on social attributions.

Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film

“…We propose that ISC may be of use to both film theorists and the film industry by providing a quantitative, neuroscientific assessment of viewers' engagement with a film. ISC is only one example of a growing trend in neuroscience to study the human brain under a more realistic and natural setting (Bartels andZeki 2004a, 2004b;Haxby et al 2001;Mobbs et al 2006;Spiers andMaguire 2007a, 2007b;Wilson, Molnar-Szakacs, and Iacoboni 2007;Zacks et al 2001;Zeki 1998). These and other studies may provide the emerging field of neurocinematics with new tools for studying different aspects of films and filmmaking.…”

“…Although the exact functions of these brain regions are still under investigation, such intermediate temporal coherency may be necessary for visual and cognitive processing functions that require integration of information across events. An example might be the processing of different kinds of montage relationships between adjacent shots (Eisenstein 1925; see also Mobbs et al 2006). Finally, processing over a long temporal scale (ranging from around 30 seconds to the entire movie sequence in our experiments) was needed to achieve high correlation across repeated presentations in more anterior regions of the brain that are believed to perform more complex, cognitive functions.…”

The role of the basolateral amygdala in the perception of faces in natural contexts

“…Recent evidence indicates that the natural context plays an important role in determining how facial and also bodily expressions of emotion are processed and reacted to [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. A facial expression is recognized faster when presented in a congruent emotional background (for example, a fearful face in a threatening context) [9].…”

“…The few studies that have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effect of affective context information on one or another stimulus category (faces, bodies, scenes) reported that the presence of affective information influences activity in the relevant category representation in the ventral stream, that is in the fusiform face area (FFA), the extrastriate body area (EBA), and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) [2,6,7]. The standard view is that the amygdala (AMG) is the central structure in orchestrating such up or down modulation [10,13,14]. For example, when a neutral face is seen in a threatening context, increased activation is observed in the FFA [6].…”

Cryptic Emotions and the Emergence of a Metatheory of Mind in Popular Filmmaking

“…Yet the Kuleshov “effect,” if it exists at all in this three‐shot format, does so only under extremely circumscribed conditions (Barratt, Cabak Rédei, Innes‐Ker, & van de Weijer, 2016; Calbi et al., 2017; Mobbs et al., 2006; Prince & Hensley, 1992). Hochberg and Brooks (1996, p. 265) explained why: “Despite Eisenstein's (1949) assertion that two pieces of film of any kind, when placed in juxtaposition, inevitably combine into a new concept of quality, there is no reason to believe that without specific effort at construal by the viewer anything other than a meaningless flight of visual fragments … will be perceived.” In other words, the filmmakers must first win over the viewer to the narrative and the diegetic world before any mind reading will link the separate shots (see also Cutting, 2005).…”