Tim Smith researches visual cognition through a variety of techniques that capture what subjects do when they watch naturalistic visual scenes. Although much research into scene perception uses static visual scenes, he is interested in how we process dynamic visual scenes, including feature films. Using techniques such as tracking the eye movements of viewers watching film sequences in combination with behavioral probes during and after viewing, he investigates the cognitive processes occurring during film viewing. His research has contributed to a computational model of fixation durations in scene viewing (Nuthmann, Smith, Engbert, & Henderson, 2010), and he has proposed an Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (Smith, 2012), which has attracted the interest of “cognitivist” film scholars, leading to his involvement in a number of presentations and projects that use empirical testing and modeling to explain what happens when we watch film sequences.

I too am interested in the long history of attempts to understand the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in film viewing, which stretch from pioneering work by Münsterberg and Rank in the 1910s, through the renewed interest of Russian psychologists in the 1920s, following Pavlov's classic studies in conditioning, and later of the Gestalt school, up to present-day work such as that of James Cutting (starting from the “psychophysics” tradition) and Uri Hasson (“neurocinematics”). In this exchange, written as a dialogue over several months, I invited Tim Smith to summarize some of his own work and to speculate on what value it may have for non-scientists interested in understanding how and why we perceive film as we do – and how this may be changing. – Ian Christie

IC: You've said that the Hollywood style of filmmaking, which permeates a wide range of visual media, has evolved formal conventions that are “compatible with the natural dynamics of attention and humans’ assumptions about continuity of space, time, and action.” It's the word “natural” that interests me in relation to where we are now in the history of moving-image entertainment – especially since we know that “Hollywood style” has changed considerably, and continues to change. Are you starting from the assumption that “Hollywood” represents a form of spectacle optimized to match a mass audience's interests and abilities?