A recent publication on Scientific Reports, from Nature Publishing, concludes that movie edition affects spectators’ eyeblink rate. According to this investigation, MTV editing style inhibits eyeblinks more than Hollywood style and one-shot style.
The eyeblink rate decreases with the decrease of the Average Shot Length in the movie edition. “This may be to lessen the effect of the discontinuity created by the constant cuts”, scientists say in the paper.
Attention has been previously reported to be connected with the frequency to eyeblink. Thus, according to this investigation, an MTV editing style should increase the attention level of viewers.
In the paper, the scientists also studied perceptive patterns in blink rate associated to media professionalization. They found differences in visual perception related to it: media professionals inhibit eyeblink rate substantially compared with non-media professionals, in any style of audio-visual edition.
A low level of eyeblink has been previously linked to eye diseases, like computer vision syndrome, corneal lesions or dry eyes.
Media creators should pay special attention to their visual health as their eyeblink rate has been proven to decrease, as a consequence of their professionalization.
Staff from Communication Faculty at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain) and Division of Neuroscience at Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville, Spain) worked with the collaboration of Spanish Public Television’s Institute (Instituto RTVE) on this study.
The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports, from Nature Group.
Title: “Eyeblink rate watching clasical Hollywood and post-classical MTV editing styles, in media and non-media professionals”.
Authors: Celia Andreu-Sánchez (1), Miguel Ángel Martín-Pascual (1), Agnès Gruart (2) y José María Delgado-García (2).
(1) Neuro-Com Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona.
(2) División de Neurociencias, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla.
Andreu-Sánchez, C., Martín-Pascual, M.A., Gruart, A., and Delgado-García, J.M. Eyeblink rate watching clasical Hollywood and post-classical MTV editing styles, in media and non-media professionals. Scientific Reports, 7: 43267. Doi: 10.1038/srep3267
