Abstract
As a new and rapidly emerging cross-disciplinary research field, neurocinematics focuses on movie research from an empirical perspective, adopting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other cognitive neuroscience technologies as well as theoretical methods. By verifying and exploring relevant film concepts, neurocinematics tries to establish a scientific basis for the movie theory and better understand frontier subjects in movie studies. We designed this experiment to detect audiences' brain activity when watching movies and verify the manipulation power of narrative film. We selected the shower murder scene in Hitchcock's Psycho as the experimental material. The results of the experiment showed that the trends of the audiences' brain activity were almost consistent with the specific movie plots. By observing audiences' brain activity while watching the movie, the experiment verified the specific effect of Hitchcock's set-up of suspense and explored the neurocognitive brain mechanisms behind the suspense effect.
Highlights
Media and cinema studies have always struggled to understand how cinema influences and manipulates human emotion (Bondebjerg, 2014; Raz and Hendler, 2014)
The results showed that during the process of watching the film, the average brain activity of the subjects was influenced by the content of the film, activity in the visual and auditory brain regions was influenced by the characteristics of the visual and the soundtrack designs
This study introduces functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technology rarely used in film studies before, and adopts the cognitivism paradigm
Summary
Media and cinema studies have always struggled to understand how cinema influences and manipulates human emotion (Bondebjerg, 2014; Raz and Hendler, 2014). When measuring viewers’ perceptions of a movie, the box office is affected by various factors, and it cannot reflect the complicated feelings of the audience (Kwak and Zhang, 2011) Behavioral measurements such as questionnaire surveys and interviews are adopted in empirical studies of cinema, which have become essential in these studies. Inappropriate sampling, poor factor structure, or low internal consistency reliability may reduce the statistical reliability and validity, and subjects may claim more favorable behavior to please the interviewer or comply with accepted norms (Hinkin, 1995; Chestnutt et al, 2004) Most of all, these methods lack the synchronous and dynamic capture of the audience’s viewing psychology. A deeper and more comprehensive understanding of movies’ impact on audiences requires introducing new research methods
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