Task Impact on Cognitive Processing of Narrative Fiction Film

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate a segment of the process by which a film spectator extracts information from moving images and treats it cognitively to generate an integral experience of a film. A comparison is attempted between objectively measurable eye movement data and the participants? own reports of their impressions of a film sequence under three different task conditions. The results show that the cognitive processing of film information is influenced not simply by the presence or absence of a task, but by a combination of specific task content and the ways in which information is presented in the film, that is, its style. These findings are tentatively connected to theories of frugal heuristics in everyday decision-making and their relevance to the cognitive processing of film information.