Visual Attention in Edited Dynamical Images

Human Eye Movements After Viewpoint Shifts in Edited Dynamic Scenes are Under Cognitive Control

“…First, the improvement of video coding standards benefits from a better understanding of the determinants of gaze behavior in edited videos ( Adzic et al, 2013 ). Second, based on our results, computational models of human eye movements can include memory components that allow to model gaze behavior in contexts where cuts frequently occur between related scene views ( Ansorge et al, 2014 ). Apart from edited videos, there are other situations where viewers visually explore complex dynamic scenes across view changes while being engaged in a specific task.…”

“…A common example is viewpoint shifts, where the same scene is shown from two different camera perspectives before and after a cut. With such cuts, cognitive top-down influences can be expected, because viewers might recognize or actively search for familiar (remembered) previous visual scene content to understand how the two different scene views relate to one another ( Ansorge, Buchinger, Valuch, Patrone, & Scherzer, 2014 ; Hochberg & Brooks, 1996 ). Indeed, using a novel type of recognition task, two recent eye tracking studies suggested that eye movements might be differently affected by cuts that connect visually unrelated scenes as opposed to cuts that connect two visually related views on the same scene ( Valuch et al, 2014 ; Valuch & Ansorge, 2015 ).…”

Memory-guided attention during active viewing of edited dynamic scenes

“…Current theories of cinematic continuity generally accept the notion that viewers often need to match the preserved features, or objects, across different views on the same scene (Magliano & Zacks, 2011;Smith, 2012). In other words, to understand an edited movie, viewers need to mentally relate successive shots to one another, and visual recognition is a key process in this viewing situation (e.g., Ansorge et al, 2014;Hochberg & Brooks, 1996). Importantly, prior research shows that visual recognition is supported by the presence of visual similarities between scenes, images, or objects (Brady, Konkle, Alvarez, & Oliva, 2008;Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980;Tarr & Bülthoff, 1998).…”

“…This is because understanding a sequence of edited images demands quick decisions about whether and how two images that are separated by a cut relate to one another. For that, the viewer needs to (implicitly) recognize the movie image following a cut as showing or not showing the same situation, location, and action as before the cut (Ansorge et al, 2014;Hochberg & Brooks, 1996). However, if a viewer is not actively following a movie, there would be no need to determine how a new shot following a cut relates to the previous one.…”