Faces on the Screen: Pictures or Natural Experience?
Byron Reeves, Matthew Lombard, Geetu Melwani
Abstract
Television is most often treated as symbolic information; pictures represent
things that are real, but they are not real themselves. This experiment was
designed to challenge this assumption in the domain of interpersonal
interactions between viewers and people on the screen. Physical distance
between viewers and people shown on the screen was manipulated and related to viewer attention, memory, and evaluation. Three different distance
manipulations, all varied within subjects, were used: (1) size of screen (big
= 41 inch picture height; small = 15 inch picture height); (2) viewing distance
(near = 4 ft; far = 10 ft); and (3) shot type (close-up = full face; long = a
seated person seen only above the lower legs). Four people were shown in
random order to 32 subjects in each of the eight cells. Attention was assessed during viewing, and recognition memory was assessed after viewing. In addition, viewers evaluated additional faces on 12 adjective pairs. The
results showed that with few exceptions, faces on big screens, faces seen in
the near seat, and faces shot close up were given more attention, resulted in
better memory, and were evaluated both more positively and negatively than
faces in the other conditions.
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