Continuity editing is frequently employed in commercial movies. It encompasses several practices concerning shot arrangement and the timing of cuts that film theorists commonly believe help audiences link individual shots into a continuous story. Psychologists, however, have not determined the extent to which continuity edits are responsible for the perception of a unified narrative.

My project seeks to put film theory to an empirical test through a quantitative psychological experiment. This experiment will assess the effects of different variations of a continuity editing technique on the ability to construct a cohesive story from distinct shots. Participants will be presented with a soundless video clip on a computer screen, which utilizes several variations of a continuity editing technique. Some of those variations adhere to continuity editing practices, while others do not. The variations will be tested to see which require the least amount of mental effort for the viewer to process.

The amount of mental effort used to process the different edits will be measured through blinking rates, pupil dilation, eye saccades and fixations, and oxygen levels in the brain. All of these measures have been seen to vary in response to altered levels of mental processing. Eye data will be measured using MangoldVision eye tracking technology. Oxygen levels in the brain, meanwhile, will be assessed using Biopac’s Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Brain Imaging system.

I spent the first three weeks of the summer program researching existing literature on editing and cognition in order to define relevant concepts and craft a literature review. The next few weeks were spent developing a hypothesis and research design, and filming the video that will become my experimental stimulus. The final weeks were spent planning for data collection during the 2017 fall semester. This involved establishing testing locations and dates, securing approval from Ithaca College's Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research, and setting up an independent study program so that I could continue my project into the fall semester of 2017. This also included composing a literature review, learning how to use the experimental equipment, running pilot tests, and establishing experimental protocols. I met at least weekly with my mentor throughout the summer, but our meetings became more frequent as we approached our self-prescribed deadlines. During these meetings, we discussed ways to refine my research and plans, as well as how to use the required research tools. We also communicated frequently through email, especially since both my mentor and I had to do a fair bit of traveling due to family engagements!

Short Term Outcomes

These outcomes were meant to be completed by the end of the Summer Scholars Experience, but before data is collected:

• Gained Approval from Institutional Review Board (IRB) for Human Subjects Research
• All research projects at Ithaca College that utilize human subjects must be ensured to be ethical in their methodologies by Ithaca College's IRB. This involves a review of not only the procedures the subject will experience during the experiment, but also how the data collected from the participants will be protected. My project has been approved by Ithaca College's IRB, which means I am permitted to proceed with the execution of my experiment.
• Completed Literature Review
• My Literature Review is a short paper analyzing the existing research that has been conducted on my topic, and how that research relates to my current project. It also identifies understudied areas that my research will shed light on. The literature review will eventually become the "introduction" portion of the final paper that will delineate my experimental results.  
• Developed Experimental Protocol
• After learning how to operate the tools that I will be using to collect my data and settling on an experimental design, I wrote up guidelines for how to collect my data. This will serve as a set of written instructions for me to reference while conducting the experiment. It will also help me explain the procedure to members of my faculty mentor's student research team, who might assist me with data collection.
• Created Experimental Stimulus and Other Materials
• In order to run my experiment, I needed to create a video to present to my participants. To do this, I recruited students who were at Ithaca College over the summer to act in a film that I shot and edited. This provided me with rigorous control over a variety of variables that might potentially affect my results, a degree of control that I may not have achieved using pre-existing films. I also created forms and questionnaires for my participants to fill out before and after the test to aid my analyses.

Long Term Outcomes

• Published Report Presenting Final Results
• Conference Presentations
• A Firmer Idea of Career Ambitions!