뉴로시네마틱스 관점에서 인지처리 과정의 평가를 위한 눈 깜빡임 분석의 유용성에 관한 연구

Abstract

Neurocinematics is a research theme that studies a viewer's sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to cinematic stimuli. Majority of studies on neurocinematics have mainly focused on changes in activity in parts of the brain or spectra of the brain response. However, the physiological states also could offer important information of human behavioral or psychological response during free viewing of cinema. Human eye blinking is cognitively suppressed to minimize loss of visual information for important situations. In term of visual information, eye blinking is closely associated with visual attention. Despite the relationship between eye blinking and visual attention, the effect of eye blinks on visual attention during natural viewing is still unclear. This study ultimately aimed to better understand the functional role of eye blinking during cognitive processes. First, I focused on the temporal pattern of inter eye blink interval (IEBI) during movie watching and investigated its relationship with episodic memory. As a control condition, 24 healthy subjects watched a nature documentary that lacked a specific story line while electroencephalography was performed. Immediately after viewing the movie, the subjects were asked to report his or her most impressive scene. Four weeks later, subjects were asked to score 32 randomly selected scenes from the movie, based on how much they were able to remember and describe. The results showed that the average IEBI was significantly longer during the movie than in the control condition. In addition, the significant increase in IEBI when watching a movie coincided with the most memorable scenes of the movie the subjects reported. In the episodic memory test also executed four weeks later, memory performance was positively correlated with IEBI (p<0.001). The results suggested that the interesting episodic narrative of the movie attracted the subjects’ visual attention relative to the documentary clip that did not have a story line. Second, I focused on the synchronization of temporal pattern of IEBI across viewers based on gender during cinema watching. Considering that IEBI reflect visual attention, I wondered whether it also could reflect a change of visual attention by gender’s interest. Eleven men and thirteen women watched a nature documentary that lacked a specific story line, as a control condition. And then, they watched a cinema for about 2 hours. In both male and female, the average IEBI was significantly longer during the movie task than the control task. Additionally, men showed significantly strong synchronization than women at cruel and curious scene (cruel scene: t = 5.0524, p<0.001, curious scene: t=3.1073, p<0.005). In contrast, women showed significantly strong synchronization than men at tense and ludicrous scene (Tense scene: t=-3.4760, p<0.001, Ludicrous scene: t=-2.7444, p<0.01). In addition, men also viewed sexual and violent scenes related to visual factors, and it was shown strong synchronization with IEBI. Further, the women also viewed the pitiable and sad scene related to emotional factors, and it was shown strong connection too. The results suggested that human interests or preference by gender could affect to suppress the eye blinks when visual information is recognized. Finally, I focused on the relationship between IEBI and narrative structure during cinema watching. I demonstrated that IEBI increased in relation to the change of event sequence, namely, a sequential flow of event in narrative (ON condition) and a reverse flow of event in narrative (MN condition). The mean IEBI on ON-group were significant high than those that on MN-group. In addition, it were indicated a different pattern of IEBI by given a sequence of event on narrative. Subject in ON group saw a narrative having an original flow of event. These subjects saw a movie that was more interesting and they were more focused on few impressive scenes than MN group. This result suggested that IEBI could reflect to modulate a change of visual attention by a flow of event in narrative In conclusion, I first demonstrated that significantly longer IEBIs during movie watching are correlated with the most memorable scenes. In addition, the subjects remembered the scenes associated with long IEBIs better than scenes associated with short IEBIs. Second, I confirmed that significantly strong synchronization during sexual, cruel, violent and curious scene with visual factors watching in men. Women also showed significantly strong connection during pitiable, tense, sad, and ludicrous scenes with emotional factors watching. The present results suggest that eye-blinking could be interpreted in new perspectives of visual attention in term of acquiring and recognizing visual information during natural watching. Therefore, IEBI may become a valuable and reliable tool as bio-marker for investigating a viewer’s minds on various situations that requires visual attention during natural watching, such as in cinema. Also, this study may be of use to both film theorists and the film industry by providing quantitative and qualitative information, neuroscientific assessment of viewers’ mind during a film.