Follow me! A spatial compatibility effect of perspective changes on viewing directions in cinematic cuts

Movies are highly edited. Even within a single movie episode, there are multiple cuts. Such cuts frequently cause changes of camera perspective. Here, we studied whether such perspective changes elicit a spatial compatibility effect on viewing directions. We let participants watch 52 short videos of actors performing everyday actions (e.g. typing on a keyboard). After a fixed period of time, the camera perspective changed in different but standardised ways (e.g. from left to right). Using eye tracking, the viewing direction was monitored. Our data revealed that the change of the camera perspective influences viewing direction: If the cut was such that the camera perspective shifted towards the right (e.g. from a centre perspective towards a view from the right side), the first fixations after the cut were directed more to the right. This compared to a perspective change towards the left. A second experiment studied whether the perspective changes also influenced saccadic reaction times towards a laterally presented target after the cut. Our results point to a spatial compatibility effect as the likely origin of the effect. We discuss our results with respect to theories of attention and fixation behaviour.