Drama Drama
This research reports results from an eyetracker experiment exploring aschematic perception in visual processing. Participants viewed this image for four or eight seconds, then were asked to recall everything they saw. They were then asked a series of yes/no object recall questions, followed by emotional and individual difference questionnaires.
{ Woman committing suicide, The Genesee Hotel and Coffee Shop, Buffalo, NY, 1942 | The woman who has just jumped from the eight-story window ledge of the Genese Hotel in Buffalo was a 35 year old divorcee. Sorgi, a news reporter with the Buffalo Courier Express, must have been tipped off that there was trouble at the hotel, although to judge from the body language of the other four participants, no one expected quite this degree of melodrama. }
88% of participants had at least one fixation on the falling woman. The average length of fixations on the woman totalled 25% of exposure time, and participants averaged three woman fixations. Yet when asked to recall what they saw, few actually report seeing the falling woman:
• Reported Falling Woman: 35%
• Reported No Central Image: 30%
• Reported Schema Consistent Central Image: 35%
Examples of schema-consistent responses:
At the same time, participants’ free response recall of other elements of the image (free parking, a person in the doorway, the coffee shop sign, the barber pole) were accurate and extensive. Yet, even when asked directly if they saw a falling woman, only 52% of participants responded yes.
