How Do Individual Differences Impact Attentional Selection Ability During Volitional Control Tasks in Film?

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

How Do Individual Differences Impact Attentional Selection Ability During Volitional Control Tasks in Film? How do individual differences impact attentional selection ability during volitional control tasks in film? by Taylor Leigh Simonson B.A., The University of Findlay, 2017 A THESIS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF SCIENCE Department of Psychological Sciences College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2021 Approved by: Major Professor Dr. Lester Loschky Copyright © Taylor Leigh Simonson 2021. Abstract Film viewers’ eye-movements seem largely disconnected from their comprehension; viewers’ eye-movements rarely deviate from narrative elements, regardless of differences in their comprehension (Loschky et al., 2015; Hutson et al., 2017), suggesting bottom-up film features (e.g., color or motion) overwhelm top-down attentional control (e.g., knowledge or experiences). However, viewers’ eye-movements were shown to deviate from narrative elements when given a task at odds with comprehension (Hutson et al., 2017). This suggests viewers used volitional attentional control, which has been suggested to be cognitively demanding during tasks like the anti-saccade task. In such cases, participants tend to make more incorrect, reflexive eye- movements (Mitchell et al., 2002), suggesting difficultly (e.g., cognitive demand) in volitionally controlling their eye-movements. Thus, can people readily use volitional attention during film viewing or is it cognitively demanding for them do so? Furthermore, there have been conflicting results surrounding eye-movement differences across Western and Eastern cultures (Nisbett & Masuda, 2003; Rayner, Castlehano, & Yang, 2007; Goh, Tan, & Park, 2009). Thus, will these cultural differences be evident in our data when using film stimuli, rather than static images, or will bottom-up film features be too overwhelming to show such cultural differences? Finally, studies have shown an important role of working memory capacity in attentional control during cognitively demanding tasks (Unsworth, Schrock, & Engle, 2004; Unsworth & Engle, 2007). Further, these studies have shown differences in performance impact attention control as well. Thus, what role will individual differences (e.g., working memory or task performance) have in attentional selection ability, if any? Participants from Kansas and Japan were eye-tracked while viewing film clips. During film viewing, they were presented with different task goals and levels of attentional demand. Specifically, participants had a primary task of either watching a film clip for comprehension (Comprehension Condition) or drawing a map of the film space from memory (Map Condition). Participants had a secondary task (cognitive load) on half the trials to increase attentional demand. After their working memory capacity was assessed Generally, results showed clearer cultural effects than in past studies using static images, showing that cultural background can overwhelm the otherwise controlling bottom-up features in film. There results also replicated and extended past studies using volitional control measures during film viewing, showing changes in film viewers’ eye-movements depending on the tasks they were given. Importantly, such volitional control of film viewers’ eye-movements came at a cost to film comprehension and was shown to be cognitively demanding. Additionally, there were effects that suggested performance was changing over time on our different performance measures, that working memory played a role in performance, and some evidence to suggest task trade-offs were occurring for Kansas and not Kyoto. Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ xi Chapter 1 - The Role of a Goal and Culture on Eye-Movements: Volitional and Mandatory Top- Down Attentional Selection During Film Viewing ................................................................. 1 Attention ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Bottom-up influences on attentional selection ........................................................................ 2 Top-down influences on attentional selection ........................................................................ 2 The tyranny of film ............................................................................................................. 4 Volitional control of attention ............................................................................................. 5 Cultural Comparisons ................................................................................................................. 7 Overview of the Current Study ................................................................................................... 8 Hypotheses ............................................................................................................................ 10 Method ...................................................................................................................................... 11 Participants ............................................................................................................................ 11 Cultural demographics questionnaire ............................................................................... 11 Design ................................................................................................................................... 12 Conditions ......................................................................................................................... 12 Materials ............................................................................................................................... 13 Computers & eye-tracking ................................................................................................ 13 Film clips .......................................................................................................................... 14 Executive working memory measure ................................................................................ 15 Cultural controls .................................................................................................................... 16 Procedure .............................................................................................................................. 16 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 17 Dependent measures ............................................................................................................. 18 Data preparation .................................................................................................................... 19 Model creation ...................................................................................................................... 19 Experiment 1: Kansas ............................................................................................................... 20 Model creation ...................................................................................................................... 20 v Results ................................................................................................................................... 20 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 23 Experiment 2: Kyoto ................................................................................................................. 25 Model creation ...................................................................................................................... 25 Results ................................................................................................................................... 25 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 27 Experiment 2a: Location Comparison ...................................................................................... 28 Model creation ...................................................................................................................... 29 Results ................................................................................................................................... 30 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 33 General Discussion ................................................................................................................... 34 Executive function discussion ............................................................................................... 35 Culture discussion ................................................................................................................. 36 Future directions ................................................................................................................... 41 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................
Recommended publications
  • The Relationship Between Language Proficiency and Attentional Control
    University at Albany, State University of New York Scholars Archive Psychology Faculty Scholarship Psychology 9-2014 The relationship between language proficiency and attentional control in Cantonese-English bilingual children: Evidence from Simon, Simon Switching, and working memory tasks Jeanette Altarriba University at Albany, State University of New York, [email protected] Chi-Shing Tse The Chinese University of Hong Kong Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/psychology_fac_scholar Part of the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Altarriba, Jeanette and Tse, Chi-Shing, "The relationship between language proficiency and attentional control in Cantonese-English bilingual children: Evidence from Simon, Simon Switching, and working memory tasks" (2014). Psychology Faculty Scholarship. 1. https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/psychology_fac_scholar/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Psychology at Scholars Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Psychology Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholars Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE published: 03 September 2014 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00954 The relationship between language proficiency and attentional control in Cantonese-English bilingual children: evidence from Simon, Simon switching, and working memory tasks Chi-Shing Tse 1* and Jeanette Altarriba 2 1 Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of
    [Show full text]
  • The Playing Brain. the Impact of Video Games on Cognition and Behavior in Pediatric Age at the Time of Lockdown: a Systematic Review
    Review The Playing Brain. The Impact of Video Games on Cognition and Behavior in Pediatric Age at the Time of Lockdown: A Systematic Review Daniela Smirni * , Elide Garufo, Luca Di Falco and Gioacchino Lavanco Department of Psychology, Educational Science and Human Movement, University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy; [email protected] (E.G.); [email protected] (L.D.F.); [email protected] (G.L.) * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +39-09123897748 Abstract: A growing number of children and adolescents play video games (VGs) for long amounts of time. The current outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic has significantly reduced outdoor activities and direct interpersonal relationships. Therefore, a higher use of VGs can become the response to stress and fear of illness. VGs and their practical, academic, vocational and educational implications have become an issue of increasing interest for scholars, parents, teachers, pediatricians and youth public policy makers. The current systematic review aims to identify, in recent literature, the most relevant problems of the complex issue of playing VGs in children and adolescents in order to provide suggestions for the correct management of VG practice. The method used searches through standardized search operators using keywords related to video games and the link with cognition, cognitive control and behaviors adopted during the pandemic. Ninety-nine studies were reviewed and included, whereas twelve studies were excluded because they were educationally irrelevant. Citation: Smirni, D.; Garufo, E.; Di Any debate on the effectiveness of VGs cannot refer to a dichotomous approach, according to which Falco, L.; Lavanco, G. The Playing VGs are rigidly ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
    [Show full text]
  • Independent Experimental Film (Animation and Live-Action) Remains the Great Hardly-Addressed Problem of Film Preservation
    RESTORING EXPERIMENTAL FILMS by William Moritz (From Anthology Film Archives' "Film Preservation Honors" program, 1997) Independent experimental film (animation and live-action) remains the great hardly-addressed problem of film preservation. While million-dollar budgets digitally remaster commercial features, and telethon campaigns raise additional funds from public donations to restore "classic" features, and most of the film museums and archives spend their meager budgets on salvaging nitrates of early live-action and cartoon films, thousands of experimental films languish in desperate condition. To be honest, experimental film is little known to the general public, so a telethon might not engender the nostalgia gifts that pour in to the American Movie Classics channel. But at their best, experimental films constitute Art of the highest order, and, like the paintings and sculptures and prints and frescos of previous centuries, merit preservation, since they will be treasured continuingly and increasingly by scholars, connoisseurs, and thankful popular audiences of future generations - for the Botticellis and Rembrandts and Vermeers and Turners and Monets and Van Goghs of our era will be found among the experimental filmmakers. Experimental films pose many special problems that account for some of this neglect. Independent production often means that the "owner" of legal rights to the film may be in question, so the time and money spent on a restoration may be lost when a putative owner surfaces to claim the restored product. Because the style of an experimental film may be eccentric in the extreme, it can be hard to determine its original state: is this print complete? Have colors changed? was there a sound accompaniment? what was the speed or configuration of projection? etc.
    [Show full text]
  • SCMS 2011 MEDIA CITIZENSHIP • Conference Program and Screening Synopses
    SCMS 2011 MEDIA CITIZENSHIP • Conference Program and Screening Synopses The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans • March 10–13, 2011 • SCMS 2011 Letter from the President Welcome to New Orleans and the fabulous Ritz-Carlton Hotel! On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to our members, professional staff, and volunteers who have put enormous time and energy into making this conference a reality. This is my final conference as SCMS President, a position I have held for the past four years. Prior to my presidency, I served two years as President-Elect, and before that, three years as Treasurer. As I look forward to my new role as Past-President, I have begun to reflect on my near decade-long involvement with the administration of the Society. Needless to say, these years have been challenging, inspiring, and expansive. We have traveled to and met in numerous cities, including Atlanta, London, Minneapolis, Vancouver, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. We celebrated our 50th anniversary as a scholarly association. We planned but unfortunately were unable to hold our 2009 conference at Josai University in Tokyo. We mourned the untimely death of our colleague and President-Elect Anne Friedberg while honoring her distinguished contributions to our field. We planned, developed, and launched our new website and have undertaken an ambitious and wide-ranging strategic planning process so as to better position SCMS to serve its members and our discipline today and in the future. At one of our first strategic planning sessions, Justin Wyatt, our gifted and hardworking consultant, asked me to explain to the Board why I had become involved with the work of the Society in the first place.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond the Black Box: the Lettrist Cinema of Disjunction
    Beyond the Black Box: The Lettrist Cinema of Disjunction ANDREW V. UROSKIE I was not, in my youth, particularly affected by cine - ma’s “Europeans” . perhaps because I, early on, developed an aversion to Surrealism—finding it an altogether inadequate (highly symbolic) envision - ment of dreaming. What did rivet my attention (and must be particularly distinguished) was Jean- Isidore Isou’s Treatise : as a creative polemic it has no peer in the history of cinema. —Stan Brakhage 1 As Caroline Jones has demonstrated, midcentury aesthetics was dominated by a rhetoric of isolated and purified opticality. 2 But another aesthetics, one dramatically opposed to it, was in motion at the time. Operating at a subterranean level, it began, as early as 1951, to articulate a vision of intermedia assemblage. Rather than cohering into the synaesthetic unity of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk , works in this vein sought to juxtapose multiple registers of sensory experience—the spatial and the temporal, the textual and the imagistic—into pieces that were intentionally disjunc - tive and lacking in unity. Within them, we can already observe questions that would come to haunt the topos of avant-garde film and performance in the coming decades: questions regarding the nature and specificity of cinema, its place within artistic modernism and mass culture, the institutions through which it is presented, and the possible modes of its spectatorial engagement. Crucially associated with 1. “Inspirations,” in The Essential Brakhage , ed. Bruce McPherson (New York: McPherson & Co., 2001), pp. 208 –9. Mentioned briefly across his various writings, Isou’s Treatise was the subject of a 1993 letter from Brakhage to Frédérique Devaux on the occasion of her research for Traité de bave et d’eternite de Isidore Isou (Paris: Editions Yellow Now, 1994).
    [Show full text]
  • Attention Control in Adults with High Autistic Traits and Attention Training
    ATTENTION CONTROL IN ADULTS WITH HIGH AUTISTIC TRAITS AND ATTENTION TRAINING IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM By Mayra Muller Spaniol A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of Psychology College of Life and Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham January 2017 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT Attentional selection is crucial for successful interaction with the environment, including the ability to select relevant information while suppressing irrelevant distractors. While attention is not thought of as a core component of the autism phenotype, attention atypicalities are often reported in research. However, contradicting findings regarding attention in autism and the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) imply that the circumstances under which selection is successful or impaired are not yet clear. In a series of experiments this thesis attempts to delineate more clearly the contexts under which attentional control is enhanced or impaired in the BAP. Specifically, the question of whether differences in attentional control are driven by perceptual atypicalities (e.g., in face processing or a local bias) is investigated in Chapters 2 & 3, where both global/local stimuli and face/scene pairs are used while participants are asked to select one aspect and ignore the other.
    [Show full text]
  • Letterism 1947-2014 Vol. 1
    The Future is Unwritten: Letterism 1947-2014 Vol. 1 Catalog 17 Division Leap 6635 N. Baltimore Ave. Ste. 111 Portland, OR 97203 www.divisionleap.com [email protected] 503 206 7291 “Radically anticipating Herbert Marcuse, Paul Goodman, and their Letterism is a movement whose influence is as widespread as it is unacknowledged. From punk to concrete poetry to experimental film, from the development of youth culture to the student uprisings of 1968 and epigones in the 1960s new left, Isou the formation of the Situationist International, most postwar avant-garde movements owe a debt to it’s rev- produced an analysis of youth as olutionary theories, yet it remains largely overlooked in studies of the period (some notable exceptions are listed in the bibliography that follows the text). an inevitably revolutionary social sector - revolutionary on its own This catalog contains over one hundred items devoted to Letterism and Inismo. To the best of our knowl- edge it is the first devoted to either of these movements in the US. It contains a number of publications terms, which meant that the terms which have little or no institutional representation on these shores, and represents a valuable opportunity for of revolution had to be seen in a future research. new way.” A number of the items in this catalog were collected by the anarchist scholar Pietro Ferrua, who was closely associated with members of both Letterism and Inismo and who has written a great deal about both move- ments. Ferrua organized the first international conference on Letterism here in Portland in 1979 [see #62].
    [Show full text]
  • Found Footage Experience. Pratictices of Cinematic Re-Use and Forms of Contemporary Film
    Found Footage Experience. Pratictices of cinematic re-use and forms of contemporary film edited by Rossella Catanese (University of Udine) and Giacomo Ravesi (Roma Tre University) In contemporary visual culture, the polysemy of cinematographic language finds its emblematic manifestation in the various paradigms of image re-use, which contextualises and relocates their functions in new interpretative formulas. The practice of found footage consists of the cinematographic, videographic and artistic practice of appropriation, re-elaboration and re- assembly of pre-existing images retrieved from heterogeneous media archives: from photography to stock footage and from home-movies to TV documentation and the web. One of the attractions of postmodern culture as a form of recycling, re-use and combination of different materials recovered from a past interpreted as a vast reservoir of imagery, found footage keeps its interest alive even in the epistemological trajectories of the so-called “new realism,” where a “society of recording” emerges (Ferraris 2011) in which everything must leave a trace and be archived. Moreover, deconstructionist thought has shown how inheritance should be understood not as a datum but always as a task, since archiving also responds to the need for regulation: preserving documents means imposing an order and establishing control through safeguarding and cataloguing devices. At the same time, audiovisual consumption practices have today become complex and composite forms of reception which rewrite the spectatorial experience and the uses and habits of accessibility, availability and relationship with films and audiovisual materials. The history of cinema is configured as a “visual deposit” (Bertozzi 2012) at the origin of the development of new formal writings and metaphorical processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas the Indian New Wave
    This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 28 Sep 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas K. Moti Gokulsing, Wimal Dissanayake, Rohit K. Dasgupta The Indian New Wave Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203556054.ch3 Ira Bhaskar Published online on: 09 Apr 2013 How to cite :- Ira Bhaskar. 09 Apr 2013, The Indian New Wave from: Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas Routledge Accessed on: 28 Sep 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203556054.ch3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 3 THE INDIAN NEW WAVE Ira Bhaskar At a rare screening of Mani Kaul’s Ashad ka ek Din (1971), as the limpid, luminescent images of K.K. Mahajan’s camera unfolded and flowed past on the screen, and the grave tones of Mallika’s monologue communicated not only her deep pain and the emptiness of her life, but a weighing down of the self,1 a sense of the excitement that in the 1970s had been associated with a new cinematic practice communicated itself very strongly to some in the auditorium.
    [Show full text]
  • Concordia University Presents
    ConcordiaConcordia UniversityUniversity presentspresents THE 30th ANNUAL SOCIETY FOR ANIMATION STUDIES CONFERENCE | MONTREAL 2018 We would like to begin by acknowledging that Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community. Please clickwww.concordia.ca/about/indigenous.html here to visit Indigenous Directions Concordia. TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcomes 4 Schedule 8-9 Parallel Sessions 10-16 Keynote Speakers 18-20 Screenings 22-31 Exhibitions 33-36 Speakers A-B 39-53 Speakers C-D 54-69 Speakers E-G 70-79 Speakers H-J 80-90 Speakers K-M 91-102 Speakers N-P 103-109 Speakers R-S 110-120 Speakers T-Y 121-132 2018 Team & Sponsors 136-137 Conference Map 138 3 Welcome to Concordia! On behalf of Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts, welcome to the 2018 Society for Animation Studies Conference. It’s an honour to host the SAS on its thirtieth anniversary. Concordia University opened a Department of Cinema in 1976 and today, the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema is the oldest film school in Canada and the largest university-based centre for the study of film animation, film production and film studies in the country.
    [Show full text]
  • Mutable Artistic Narratives: Video Art Versus Glitch Art
    Mutable Artistic Narratives: Video Art versus Glitch Art Ana Marqués Ibáñez Department of Fine Arts. Didactic of Plastic Expression University of La Laguna Biography Ana holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the Univer- sity of Granada and is a professor in the Fac- ulty of Education at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife. Her PhD thesis focused on the commu- nicative capacity of images in literary classics, including the Divine Comedy, with a compari- son of the illustrations of Dante’s work created by different artists. Ana is a professor in the Early Childhood and Primary Education degree programmes, in which she teaches contemporary art and education. She is also a lecturer and coordinator of the special- isation course in drawing, design and visual arts in the Education Master’s Degree programme. Her current research focuses on promoting play as an element of learning, as well as creating teaching resources related to visual culture for people with disabilities. She has participated in national and international conferences, most re- cently at the Texas Art Education Association conference, where she gave presentations on art installations for children as generators of play and learning, and visual diaries as a form of ex- pression and knowledge. 1172 Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Peer-reviewed | Full paper Abstract This project analyses a set of different innovative video formats for their sub- sequent incorporation and application in the fields of art and education. The aim is to conduct a historical review of the evolution of video art, in which images, video and experimental and instrumental sound play an essential role.
    [Show full text]
  • New-Dialogues-With-Analogue.Pdf
    Projects / Processes Volume I Series Editor: Senjuti Mukherjee New Dialogues with Analogue: Indian Experiments on Film Mrinalini Vasudevan A still from the India on Film workshop programme at Serendipity Arts Festival 2019. Photograph courtesy Harkat Studios. India on Film Curated by Harkat Studios Venue Old Goa Institute of Management Curatorial Note Curatorial & Production Team Aditi Kashyap, Michaela Talwar, Namrata Sanghani, Sapan Taneja, Sheba Alexander, Tanya Dixit Lead Curator Karan Talwar Curator Harkat Studios It happened about a decade ago—“film” as a medium was discarded by the film industry, almost overnight. Decades worth of knowledge, equipment and processes were put aside and the craft of “making” a film was sealed shut in boxes, forgotten in storage. The digital age brought on the beautiful democratisation of the moving image, but there was one casualty: its medium. An entire generation of makers slowly realised that along with the tools of the craft, they also lost a large trove of meticulous artistic processes, built with each successive maker. “Would a painter be able to make the same work without oils and canvas?”, quipped one young film-maker. India on Film explores the interrelationship between the art and craft of making on “film” through a series of film screenings, workshops and installations. The intent is to highlight the shift caused by the dismemberment of a medium through changes in narrative techniques by celebrating experiments on film from the Indian subcontinent. It gives the medium centre-stage and highlights the deliberation in the “making” of moving images. The curatorial spreads its net wide and takes you through works from a multitude of conscious filmmakers who work in the Indian context.
    [Show full text]