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Film Cognition

What is going on in the mind of a viewer when they watch an audiovisual narrative? Film and TV evolved formal techniques to minimise the effort involved in processing their highly unnatural flow of sensory information. Here we study cinematic techniques such as cinematography, editing, and sound design as well as their moment-by-moment influences on cognition and emotion to both understand why film evolved the way it did and what this tells us about how we process real-world dynamic scenes.

Our work into film cognition tackles many aspects including film literacy, the role of sound, narrative comprehension and edit blindness. But a large part of our work has focussed on the perception of continuity across edited film sequences and how we can use eye tracking as a window into the real-time cognition occurring during film viewing. All of these areas are covered in our publications below but for a quick overview of these two main areas first check out these publications:

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For on-going ramblings on this topic check out Dr. Tim J. Smith's research blog, Continuity Boy.

  • Publications
    Portugal, Anna Maria and Bedford, Rachael and Cheung, Celeste and Mason, Luke and Smith, Tim J. (2021) Longitudinal touchscreen use across early development is associated with faster exogenous and reduced endogenous attention control. Scientific Reports 11 (2205), ISSN 2045-2322. Portugal, A.M*., Bedford, R.*, Cheung, C.H.M., Gliga, T., Smith, T.J. (2020) Saliency-Driven Visual Search Performance in Toddlers With Low– vs High–Touch Screen Use. JAMA Pediatr. . doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.2344 (*joint first authors) Cheung, C. H., Bedford, R, de Urabin, I. R. S., Karmiloff-Smith, A., & Smith, T. J. (2017). Daily touchscreen use in infants and toddlers is associated with reduced sleep and delayed sleep onset. Scientific Reports, 7 Bedford, R., de Urabain, I. R. S., Cheung, C. H., Karmiloff-Smith, A., & Smith, T. J. (2016). Toddlers’ fine motor milestone achievement is associated with early touchscreen scrolling. Frontiers in Psychology, 7 Portugal, Anna Maria and Bedford, Rachael and Cheung, Celeste and Mason, Luke and Smith, Tim J. (2021) Longitudinal touchscreen use across early development is associated with faster exogenous and reduced endogenous attention control. Scientific Reports 11 (2205), ISSN 2045-2322.
  • Upcoming Talks
    No upcoming talks at present...
  • Past Talks
    Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete, Florida, USA, May 17-22 2019 Talk at the CBCD Seminar Series, London, March 5 2019 Talk at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, January 21 2019 Digital Media and Developing Minds 2nd National Congress at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, New York, USA, October 15-18 2018 Family event at the Science of Screen Time Science Day in Polka Theatre, Wimbledon, London, July 24 2018 Talk at the International Congress of Infant Studies, S9.8 Flash talk session 10: Babies and screens, Philadelphia, USA, July 3 2018 (14-15:30) Informal discussion and poster at the Techtopia Festival in Polka Theatre, Wimbledon, London, May 24 - June 3 2018 Talk at the Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture at the University of Maryland, USA, May 29 2018 Talk at the CBCD Seminar Series, London, 24 April 2018 Poster presentation, European Conference on Visual Perception, Berlin, Germany. August 2017 Poster presentation, 23rd Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference, Massachusetts, USA, April 28 2017 Paper Symposium on Media and Self-Regulation: Research and Implications for Policy and Practice, SRCD Biennial Meeting, Austin, Texas, USA, April 6 - 8 2017 Talk at the 4th EUNETHYDIS International Conference on ADHD, Berlin, Germany, October 19 2016 Symposium on Growing up in a Multisensory World, BPS Developmental Section Annual Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland, September 14 2016 Talk at the Pre-school Learning Alliance, Annual Alliance Member Event, London, June 10 2016
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