Abstract
This study tests how inconsistencies in spatial relationships affect visual property representations. We do this by violating a filmmaking heuristic known as the 180° rule, a convention of placing cameras in a consistent and limited area of the set. Violating this rule produces the percept of a sudden spatial dislocation or inconsistency. According to some theories of change detection, this disruption might mask awareness of other properties in a scene due to costs that arise from orienting to the new viewpoint and processing new spatial information. However, it is also possible that viewpoint inconsistencies increase visual awareness if the resulting reorientation prompts a new encoding of the scene. Two experiments investigated the effect of spatial discontinuity on visual awareness using change detection. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a single edited film that included a 180° violation, a property change, or both simultaneously. Property changes were significantly more likely to be detected when they co-occurred with a disruption of spatial continuity. In Experiment 2, violations were created not by moving the camera, but by rotating the orientation of actors in the scene, thus preserving consistent background information in violation and no-violation films. Again, more participants noticed the property change when it was presented simultaneously with a spatial discontinuity. Results suggest simple forms of spatial encoding support perceptual continuity. Additionally, the disruption of perceptual continuity may induce a general scene recoding resulting in increased awareness of visual properties.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013