PSYC 207 Cognition and Cinema

College of Critical & Professional Studies

3 credits 45.0 hours
200 level undergraduate course

This course will expose students to the empirical studies that reveal the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underlying film viewing. Such empirical findings are relevant to both the layperson interested in how the mind works and why narrative structures are so appealing to the human mind, and to the filmmaker or the playwright as they want to capture the audience’s eyes, attention, and memory. Phenomena pertaining to the perception and cognition of film viewing will target (1) low-level visual features of film (i.e., color, depth, motion, etc.), (2) the higher-level cognition of narrative techniques (i.e., sequential structure, puzzle plots, open-ended stories, etc.), and (3) cultural aspects relevant to the viewer and the filmmaker. The readings address several phenomena regarding the perception and cognition of film & narrative comprehension (e.g., re-construct depth in a 2D image, perceive the sound track that assists us in anticipating the following shot, segment streams of visual information, recognize cultural features in global cinema). This course should be of interest to students of film and animation as it addresses the viewers’ perception and cognition mechanisms underlying certain moving image techniques.

This course is not repeatable for credit.
This course can fulfill a critical studies elective or free elective requirement.

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