Indexing space and time in film understanding

Abstract

We investigated the extent to which understanders monitor shifts in time and space during ®lm comprehension. Participants viewed a feature-length ®lm and identi®ed those points in the ®lm in which they perceived a change in situation. We performed an a priori analysis of the ®lms to identify the shifts in time, the movement of characters, and region. The relationship between the theoretical analysis of the ®lms and the participants judgements of situational change was assessed. The results provide support for the Event Indexing Model and suggest that situation models for ®lmed events are indexed along multiple dimensions of situational continuity. Furthermore, the pattern of results was similar for narrative ®lm as they are for narrative text. This ®nding suggest that there are general mechanisms for event understanding that operate independently of medium or mode of experience.It has long been assumed that stories conveyed through discourse represent much more than what is explicitly provided in a text. Rather, they convey a complex set of events that bear some resemblance to real-world events. In particular, narrative events occur within a particular time, place, and are causally connected. Situation models can capture the people, spatial and temporal settings, the goal plans and actions, and event sequences that are depicted in a story. In the present study, we tested a particular model of discourse understanding, namely the Event Indexing (EI) Model (Zwaan et al., 1995a;, in a non-text domain, speci®cally ®lm understanding. Narrative ®lms may more closely resemble everyday experiences than do narrative texts, given the perceptual and analogue nature of ®lmed events. As such, the present study may provide a test of the extent to which the EI model can account for event understanding in general.Theories of situation model construction assume that coherent models are indexed along multiple dimensions of situational continuity Magliano et al., 1998;Zwaan et al., 1995a;). The EI model (Zwaan et al., 1995a; assumes that the online monitoring of situational continuity is a central process in model construction. As each story event and action is comprehended, understanders monitor changes in continuity in entities, time, space, causality, and intentionality. This indexing provides a basis for monitoring coherence because it enables an understander to determine how incoming information is related to the prior context. To the extent that a current event shares an index on a particular dimension with an event that is currently in working memory, a link will be formed between them, via the index. If no link can be established, a new index will be formed on that dimension.

Segmentation in the perception and memory of events

“…Larger physical changes have been studied using commercial cinema as a stimulus, in which the locations and temporal setting of characters can change from shot to shot. In one study, such changes were found to predict where viewers segmented Hollywood movies [7]. Conceptual changes that are correlated with event boundaries include changes in goals of actors, in causal relations and in interactions amongst characters [8,9].…”

Mind wandering during film comprehension: The role of prior knowledge and situational interest

“…There is evidence, however, that film and reading comprehension share similar cognitive processes (Magliano, Loschky, Clinton, & Larson, 2013;Magliano, Miller, & Zwaan, 2001) so a degree of extrapolation from reading to film is appropriate. Comprehension, in general, involves hierarchical cognitive process where information is encoded at a shallow level and proceeds through the cognitive system resulting in a mental representation or a situation model (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998).…”

When goals collide: Monitoring the goals of multiple characters

“…context of film (Baggett, 1979;Magliano, Dijkstra, & Zwaan, 1996;Magliano, Miller, & Zwaan, 2001;Schwan, Garsoffky, & Hesse, 2000;Tan, 1996), as compared with that for narrative text. Theories and empirical findings derived from research on narrative texts should generalize to narrative film ).…”