Where your eyes travel on subsequent viewings...

[something]

Sort of an awkward subject line, but I couldn't think of a good one-liner title that encompassed my idea.

This might be something that applies only to people who watch their anime subtitled, but perhaps not exclusively. Now, sub watchers get very good at "reading" the subtitles as little as possible so that most of their visual attention is focused on the animation. That said, particularly when dialogue gets heavy, you really need to concentrate to some extent on the subtitles, which impacts how much you can look at the animation. It's not a huge issue, but it's undeniably there.

What I've found is that on subsequent viewings, I can take my eyes off the subtitles here and there and look at other things going on in the scene. Instead of focusing what visual energy I have left over on the character speaking, I can look at the person he's talking to. Instead of the person swinging the sword, I look at the secondary character in the background. Instead of the two protagonists chatting in the classroom, I look at their unnamed classmates a few rows over.

Hell I guess it's not even just a matter of subtitles. I never read the subs on OP or ED songs, and I still find myself often looking at the same thing each time unless I consciously make the effort to look at something else. Take the 'dancing' during the last part of the Haruhi ED animation. Five characters take page, lined up right to left, with Haruhi in the middle. The first umpteen times I watched the ED, I looked at Haruhi the whole time (not that it's a long thing) as she danced. But then I decided one time to follow Mikuru with my eyes. Then Yuki. Then Kyon. Then Itsuki. It's a subtle thing, but it's certainly intersting.

It also takes a certain kind of show for this sort of exercise to be worthwhile. Most shows won't bother putting anything "extra" in there, and it's very much "focus here because that's all there is to see". If one character is talking, the other is a static image until it's their turn. Unnamed characters have very generic designs and move very little. But when a show does try to make things in your peripheral vision interesting, it can pay off. Continuing the Haruhi example (it's not the only show that's good for this, but I use it because I've watched it more than any other show ever, have most of the dialog memorized, and am currently rewatching it yet again, which prompted this thread), I've found myself very deliberately ignoring both words and intended "sweet spots" on the screen to look at everything else going on. It's usually going to be something subtle that catches your eye, but it really adds some depth to the show and makes rewatches all the more worthwhile. And sometimes it's something pretty significant... anyone who has seen episode 12K, for example, knows what I mean. I'll admit I didn't catch either of thw two major instances first time around, because I really do focus a lot on the words the first time around.

Anyway, this is a cumbersome first post, as mine almost always are, but if you get the point and have any comments to add, go ahead. Mention specific shows where this adds to the experience for bonus points.

[Serial Experiments Nobue]

I've been watching subbed anime for so long, I don't even notice how I look at the words in relation to the image on the screen anymore. I don't think my eyes are fixed on the bottom third of the screen, but I can't really tell anymore.

That said, I recently tried an experiment that was equally frustrating (because I couldn't tie words to images) and amazing at the same time. I watched Adolescence of Utena in Japanese, with no subtitles. Having seen it several times already, I knew the storyline to the movie, so I thought it was time to get the full visual impact of that film and watch it with nothing overlaid on the image.

Wow... just wow. The film that had already captured my personal top spot in anime for its depth and symbolism just blew me away again when I was allowed to concentrate solely on the visuals. There is just so much to see in Adolescence of Utena that each time I watch it is like the first time all over again. I purposely let a long time go (up to a year) in between each time I put this movie on just to make sure it keeps its impact each time.

[something]

[ QUOTE ]
Serial Experiments NieA said:
That said, I recently tried an experiment that was equally frustrating (because I couldn't tie words to images) and amazing at the same time. I watched Adolescence of Utena in Japanese, with no subtitles.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've tried to watch some things raw before, but I never get too far. I'm just too focused on what's being said and how it interacts with the visuals to go for any length of time without having a good grasp of what is being said. And truth me told, I've been watching subtitled anime exclusively for years now as well, so I'm a bit weirded out by a lack of words on the bottom of the screen /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

Your name does remind me one other potential show though... Lain. Not because there is a lot of movement on the periphery (there isn't a lot of movement, period), but because there's so much... "stuff" in every frame. Wires writhing around like piles of snakes, telephone poles rising like monoliths off into the distance, the wastes of technological graveyards all over...

[christianlf]

[ QUOTE ]
disarm said:
This might be something that applies only to people who watch their anime subtitled, but perhaps not exclusively. Now, sub watchers get very good at "reading" the subtitles as little as possible so that most of their visual attention is focused on the animation. That said, particularly when dialogue gets heavy, you really need to concentrate to some extent on the subtitles, which impacts how much you can look at the animation. It's not a huge issue, but it's undeniably there.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really don't think this is true for everyone. I don't know if I just read differently than some people or what, but I don't consciously read words as much as I just see sentences and understand pretty immediately. I don't consciously "read" anything, if that makes sense. Well, unless it's really awkward phrasing or written incredibly poorly, and I can get shaken out of it into a more...stuttered experience. When I'm watching a subtitled show or movie, there's no disconnect between the words coming out of their mouth and my understanding of it. I always have trouble articulating this... /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

This may be why I suck at proofreading. I have to consciously go word to word when I'm proofing something (like an academic paper or a post or my writing). That's kinda a pain in the ass sometimes since my brain has the habit of fixing mistakes in my head as I read it and skipping over what I actually (mis)wrote.

Anyways, to answer your post, I do pick up different things on rewatches, but that's true of anything I watch, whether it be a foreign film or an English language movie. I just chalk that up to not being engrossed with what's going to happen next, leaving me to be more analytical about what I'm watching. It's hard to pin down what it might be, whether a story element or just something in the background, as that differs from show to show, movie to movie.

[something]

[ QUOTE ]
Christian said:
I really don't think this is true for everyone. I don't know if I just read differently than some people or what, but I don't consciously read words as much as I just see sentences and understand pretty immediately.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is what I was basically describing... I don't "read word for word" either, but you still have to look at the words at some point to process it. You can't read, however quickly, words you've never seen. And there will often be more detailed discussions at times that require a longer glance. And you have to do this for every change in the subtitles. You're constantly shifting your eyes ever so slightly, so you can't stay completely focused on something on the screen while still reading the subtitles. How noticeable the whole thing is depends on numerous factors, such as 1) how much action there is on screen or 2) how complex the dialog is (sci-fi mumbo jumbo takes more conscious effort fo example), as well as things like 3) subtitle readability or 4) amount of text to process i.e. less flashes of text, but longer each time or more flashes, shorter each time or 5) fluidity of translation.

Also, it might be how far you sit from the tv/monitor. I watch absolutely everything on my computer, with a 19" monitor maybe... 2.5 feet from my face. I don't like to sit far away because I like to pause and chat and other stuff while watching. So, with something fullscreened, my eyes have to cover more distance, comparatively, than would eyes that are taking in the whole scene at once from ten feet away.

But like I said, it can happen even when subtitles aren't a factor, because there are clearly spots on screen in any given ep where the creators "intend" us to be looking. And generally that's where you want to look because that's where the show is unfolding. I agree with what you said about lower tension levels on rewatches (since you know what happens) giving you the leisure to wander around a bit visually. I've been taking my eyes away from some scenes while watching now that I'd never have peeled my eyes away from the first time, unless I were totally insane.

Of course, even for shows with amazing attention to detail, letting your eyes intentionally wander to low-movement spots on screen can point out... not flaws per se, but various places where you know a "real" person would be moving, reacting in some way. But due to budgets and time being finite (even for KyoAni!), it's unavoidable that sometimes the characters are just going to be standing there looking static, which you never would have noticed (at least not consciously) the first time around.

[christianlf]

I get what you're saying, and I'm sure it's true for many people in the case of subtitles, but I'm capable of processing very large quantities of text instantly. So, really, I don't miss anything "reading." I've noticed no difference on rewatches between things in my own language and things subtitled in terms of catching stuff I missed. It's like I read it instantly, and my brain feeds it out to me as the characters speak. Don't ask to me to explain how or why this works...it just kinda does. /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif (see, I'm bad at explaining this /images/graemlins/tongue.gif) The only stuff I choke on (to the point I'm aware I'm reading or it takes me any real time) is stuff that doesn't make sense or is written incredibly poorly.

As far as just visually lavish things, something like Metropolis would be a good example. There's so much going on on the screen in so many different places, that it's very easy to catch things you didn't see the first time around. While they're most definitely inconsequential, I found it interesting allthesame.

edit: getting back to my previous proofreading comments...Doh. /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

[monika]

[ QUOTE ]
disarm said:
It's not a huge issue, but it's undeniably there.

[/ QUOTE ]

I deny this. Subtitles can be read with peripheral vision most of the time, and saccades (quick glances) in the case of unexpected words. Fixation is only necessary if you really have no idea what's being said even after you read it. I only ever find myself focusing on subtitles if I'm doing something silly like watching in Japanese with Spanish subtitles or something.

From what I gather from the way some people talk about reading subtitles, there's a psychological hurdle you have to get over where you realize you can understand what's being said without hearing each word in your head. If you find yourself hearing every word in English in your head as you read it, you're probably right at this hurdle. When you're past it, turning on subtitles is like turning on a universal translater.

(Edit: I see a bunch of people already addressed this. (I just woke up...))

[something]

[ QUOTE ]
monika said:
I deny this. Subtitles can be read with peripheral vision most of the time, and saccades (quick glances) in the case of unexpected words.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sigh... Either people are thinking I'm on the "subs require scrutiny such that you can't watch the show" side of things (which I'm not, and wouldn't want to bring up anyway because it smells of sub vs dub), or... I don't know.

Of course subs can be read with peripheral vision most of the time, with small glances for complex sentences, that's what I do and what, I thought, I more or less said. What people seem to disagree with, though, is that this requires diverting any mental or physical effort at all from processing images. I have to put aside how I view that proposition though, because I can't very well (and really am not interested in trying to) argue that you're wrong because I can't get inside your head.

So, right now I kinda wish I had never even mentioned subtitles, since my question could still stand without them. I just thought I phrased it in such a general way and made so sure to note that it's a very minor mental diversion, but it obviously wasn't enough to avoid controversy on what has always been a hot button issue /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

[Lego]

Interesting question disarm. Unless it's a talkitive series like GITS SAC, I can take in the subs while looking at the whole picture. I don't focus on the bottom part of the screen heh. What I'm trying to say is that I can look at the whole picture while having registering the subs in my peripheral vision.

If I can disarm, I want to add in something to your topic heh. Since we're talking about subsequen viewings, how about when you watch a show for the second or third time? I often look at the backgrounds or things that aren't happening "in front of the camera" if you will. I can remember that while watching The Count of Monte Cristo(2002) the director said in the commentary that in some shots he likes to "force the eye" if you will. So if two character are in front of the camera talking, you might not notice the antics of other characters in the background. That is usually where my eyes go to heh.

A great example of this is in episode 5 of Bebop, "Ballad of the Fallen Angels". When <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>Spike makes it to the "top" of the church near the stained glass window, if you look you can see Vicious slowly fading in before he makes his first sword thurts. </span> Things like that are what make me watch a show more than once.

[Suwako Moriya]

While I can't think of any examples or say they are worth while. I should probably be sleeping. I can say that in the case of some series, I will notice things on repeat viewings that I didn't notice the first time. It can be for various reasons.

After you've finished a series, you may be conciously or subconciously looking for "clues" to the later "plot twists" for example. Such as maybe you find out that a certain girl is an Angel in episode 23 of 26. So later while rewatching the series, you pay closer attention in general.

Perhaps it's just a simple case of "Oh I never noticed that the first time" and nothing more. Or well you did notice it, but it never really registered in your mind until later.

There are cases where I have not noticed something until after it was pointed out to me by someone else directly or indirectly. Hopefully I'm not the only here like that. Other wise, I'm going to feel rather silly...

[monika]

I'm a detail freak. (If I think a scene is worth it, I'll rewatch it at 1/4th speed or slower.) Things I tend to look out for are character facial expressions, seemingly superfluous motion (which never are - this is anime), character handedness and other quirks, and of course, continuity or cel coloring errors.

I don't really think this is a function of what part of the screen you're looking at, but more what you come into a scene knowing. A recent example, in episode 14 of Ouran, Akira appeals to Kyoya on the injustice that he, as the first son, getting passed over by his father for his more talented younger brother. The expression on Kyoya's face (and exactly what it means) is priceless, but you only notice it if you've seen episode 24, or at least 17 and 26. On first viewing, your eyes are drawn to Akira, but on later viewings, you notice what's going on with Kyoya. To continue with your set of Haruhi examples, on first viewing, Itsuki is clearly gay for Kyon, but it's not until later viewings that you realize that it's a monotonically increasing function of chronological time. You come into the scene knowing he's gay for Kyon, and your eyes are drawn to the little features that let you know how much.

[Njr Scrawl]

Good question. 1st is on the subtitles more than anything.

2nd is usually on characters expressions, body language &amp; things directly affecting the main story.

3rd I pay attention to secondary things, the importance of what's said &amp; background.

4th I usually go back to favourite characters see if there are any other things I missed.

None are concrete, but I usually follow the pattern above.

All other times I usually focus on favourite moments, scenes &amp; music, enjoying a show's overall good feel.

[something]

[ QUOTE ]
Lego said:
If I can disarm, I want to add in something to your topic heh. Since we're talking about subsequen viewings, how about when you watch a show for the second or third time? I often look at the backgrounds or things that aren't happening "in front of the camera" if you will.

[/ QUOTE ]
Heh, that's not an addition, it's exactly what I wanted to focus on with my post (so thanks). But yes, backgrounds are definitely one thing I pay almost no attention to the first time around, unless there are no characters on screen. Only when I'm on a subsequent viewing can I pull away from the main action and look around. For example, signs on stores (translated or not) and such sometimes pass by unnoticed the first time, but I'll look at them next time around.

[something]

[ QUOTE ]
monika said:
character facial expressions

[/ QUOTE ]
Like blinking~ I never really take note of blinking the first time through (or even in real life, even my OWN blinking most of the time), but little details like that are great.

[Redcoffin]

The thing that I tend to look for--and which I find myself starting to look for on the first viewing if the show hasn't grabbed me--are the change over moments between different production teams. The director and animation-director are supposed to ensure that this is invisible, but people in the business can tell immediately, by slight changes in the way characters move, or by the fact that one character is obviously "owned" by a certain group. I am not enough of an otaku to take it to the point of trying to identify the work of individual people just by look-and-feel, but this could be done... /images/graemlins/knowital.gif

Then of course there are continuity errors. The first I ever noticed on my own was the pretty-well-known stack of chips disappearing off the gaming table in Wings of Honneamise, but things like characters' clothes changing slightly, handedness, etc. are interesting.

Then there are unusual moments. In a couple of scenes during Otogi Zoshi, it looks like they deliberately processed the original sketches instead of sending it through clean-up, for effect. The most famous scene where this occurs is in FLCL, but that was just done for pure cantankerousness sake and supposed to be obvious to the viewer. In Otogi Zoshi those scenes tend to be brief, flash-through scenes during fights, and I don't think the viewer is supposed to be consciously aware.

One other thing that comes to mind is color-balance. Coloring is so important in anime and imparts an immediate quality to the scenes--but one can explore it on subsequent viewings. All the Gainax shows--even their throwaways--have those magnificent, lush background paintings. I can't think of a show I really like, that doesn't have really good color work.

As disarm pointed out, some shows are much, much richer for this sort of thing than others. I agree that one can take in a lot of subtitle content with peripheral vision--I watch the subtitles because I understand a fair amount of Japanese and use them to check myself (and often to mentally translate the dialogue into "better" dialogue more congenial to my taste), but shows that are both heavy on dialogue / screen text *and* heavy on visual content are particularly exhausting for subtitle viewers, requiring frequent recourse to the freeze button. The most recent offering that really hit me this way is Shingu. Not all good shows are subtitle heavy, but when I start to find myself torn between reading the dialogue and trying to get everything that is on the screen, I usually know I've found a keeper.

[Tomcat]

[ QUOTE ]
Wrath of the Njr said:
Good question. 1st is on the subtitles more than anything.

2nd is usually on characters expressions, body language &amp; things directly affecting the main story.

3rd I pay attention to secondary things, the importance of what's said &amp; background.

4th I usually go back to favourite characters see if there are any other things I missed.

None are concrete, but I usually follow the pattern above.

All other times I usually focus on favourite moments, scenes &amp; music, enjoying a show's overall good feel.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, what he said. There are very few shows that warrant a third viewing, but there are quite a few that are worth a second one, and it there was more than meets the eye there, then maybe it gets in the queue again. So far, not that many series had very good facial expressions or body language, or maybe I should say very subtle facial and body.

-TC

[ColoradoJim]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the size of the TV being used to watch the show. I'm pretty sure that if one sits close enough so that the head has to move to see the entire picture, you are going to miss a lot of stuff. I suspect that those watching subtitled shows on portable DVD players will capture everything much better. Widescreen shows are probably the most likely types of shows to show new details in a rewatch for this reason.

[jecca-neko]

[ QUOTE ]
Colorado Jim said:
I suspect that those watching subtitled shows on portable DVD players will capture everything much better.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think so. Small details are even smaller and are easier to miss.

Personally, it depends for me on how complicated the language is. An example is Crest of the Stars. That show has enough technical terms, plus Abh, that I need to watch the subtitles a lot more. Also, when I watch shows with a different dialect, such as Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, I have to watch subtitles more. It's harder for me to understand Osakan way of saying certain things.

Lately I've been watching Cardcaptor Sakura (for the first time, yay!). The language is easy enough that I don't pay attention to the subtitles really. So it's easier to catch the small details in the animation.

For instance, I noticed right away in the episode on the second volume of CCS that Tomoyo's watch has her name on it. I found that odd because, really, why do you need your name on your own watch? Who is going to steal something attached to your wrist? /images/graemlins/stunned0.gif

My eyes also seem to notice things that are important to me. I love cats. I can notice tiny cats way in the background but I can miss something going on in the foreground because it's not as important to me. I'll typically notice it with a second viewing though.

[monika]

[ QUOTE ]
Tomcat said:
So far, not that many series had very good facial expressions or body language

[/ QUOTE ]

It's a problem with the medium. Facial expressions require money, effort, and skill. Your average show isn't going to be too worried about it. (The relative costs between, say, facial expressions and giant robots are effectively reversed between anime and live action.)

I'm rarely impressed with the quality of acting on the part of the lines that form a character on a screen, but I was certainly impressed by the lines that played Touga in the carrot scene (http://larself.com/carrotscene.jpg) in Utena. Marvelous use of prop, too.

[Atomsk]

I don't rewatch series that much. Only sometimes you're forced too, for instance when you want to "re-author" a DVD to add subtitles to it. It's nice then when you notice some hints to events that happen later on.

For instance in Arete Hime you might notice something flashing in the sky above the mountains in the background when Arete is being taken away by the sorceror. It doesn't mean anything until you've watched the end of the movie and know what it is.

[monika]

[ QUOTE ]
Atomsk said:
It's nice then when you notice some hints to events that happen later on.

[/ QUOTE ]

OhGodTouch ::clutches mouth and runs away::

[Amasawa]

I often use the pause button to read the subtitle. As soon as a new subtitle appears, I pause to read it, then return to watching. That way I don't miss the action and other visuals.

[ QUOTE ]
monika said:
Subtitles can be read with peripheral vision most of the time, and saccades (quick glances) in the case of unexpected words. Fixation is only necessary if you really have no idea what's being said even after you read it...


[/ QUOTE ]
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not up on the latest research, but I believe that the eye cannot resolve images with enough clarity for reading outside of the fovea. Peripheral vision would not be satisfactory.

[monika]

While that may be true, you can recognize a stop sign out of the corner of your eye. I find this along with the aforementioned saccades to be more than enough to read most subtitles.

Edit: I'd be interested in this kind of research (http://businessnetwork.smh.com.au/verve/_resources/200Coming-to-the-aid-of-the.jpg) if I wasn't in a completely unrelated field. (Computer vision. Trust me. Completely unrelated.)

[ QUOTE ]
monika said:
While that may be true, you can recognize a stop sign out of the corner of your eye. I find this along with the aforementioned saccades to be more than enough to read most subtitles.


[/ QUOTE ]
I'm almost certain that a stop sign is recognized in peripheral vision by its shape, context, and color. The text most likely plays a small role in identification. I'd hazard a guess that if you took a stop sign, re-lettered it to say "GO", and showed it to a motorist concentrating on the road, they'd still report seeing a stop sign.

[monika]

K, bad example. But here's an experiment I've seen performed at a half dozen planetariums, so maybe you've seen it too.

They flash a long word in Greek really fast on part of the sky. No one gets it. They flash the word "dog" at the same speed, and everyone can read it. You don't need to be staring at a word to read it, especially if it's a common word. Furthermore, you don't need to have the word in focus at the time you recognize it - you can look at it briefly, look elsewhere, and then read it out of your vision cache.

Edit: The same holds true for any object you would like to see. Your fovea is crazy tiny and if we could only process the stuff in it as being in focus, we'd have trouble getting through life. Our eyes and our whole vision system solve this problem by remembering what things that are out of focus looked like the last time we looked at them and saw them in focus.

[Tomcat]

[ QUOTE ]
Amasawa said:
I often use the pause button to read the subtitle. As soon as a new subtitle appears, I pause to read it, then return to watching. That way I don't miss the action and other visuals.

[/ QUOTE ]
I often pause to read the subtitles, especially on the first watch of a difficult series. I don't pause for every subtitle, and sometimes I make it through an entire episode without hitting pause to read the subtitles now. I am an incredibly poor and slow reader, so subtitles have been a challenge for me, but I still prefer that option. After four or five years now, I don't have to pause for EVERY subtitle just to read it, just the ones that are very complex, or flash too quickly.

I DO like to pay attention to things other than the subtitles, and sometimes I'll watch a sequence several times if I have found something interesting.

-TC

[ QUOTE ]
monika said:
...you don't need to have the word in focus at the time you recognize it - you can look at it briefly, look elsewhere, and then read it out of your vision cache.

Edit: The same holds true for any object you would like to see. Your fovea is crazy tiny and if we could only process the stuff in it as being in focus, we'd have trouble getting through life. Our eyes and our whole vision system solve this problem by remembering what things that are out of focus looked like the last time we looked at them and saw them in focus.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'll provisionally agree to the first part. That's true of simple objects, words, etc. It's not true of complex sentence formations. A person could not, for example, see the sentence

"This is the maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumpled horn"

and expect to parse it without considerable undivided attention and still achieve 100% comprehension. Indeed, it's much easier to "fill in the holes" for non-language images. There's less meaning there, and probably it takes less brainpower to imagine a car than my example sentence.

But all of that is beyond the point. The original post said...
[ QUOTE ]
disarm said:
Now, sub watchers get very good at "reading" the subtitles as little as possible so that most of their visual attention is focused on the animation. That said, particularly when dialogue gets heavy, you really need to concentrate to some extent on the subtitles, which impacts how much you can look at the animation. It's not a huge issue, but it's undeniably there.


[/ QUOTE ]
... in reference to watching in Japanese with subtitles for the first time, and I think the point stands. For complex reading comprehension of novel (new) material, a viewer must necessarily commit more attention to the bottom half of the screen.

I freely admit that I don't have any research to back up the claim, but I cannot imagine text having no bearing whatsoever on attention. That would mean that reading requires, by definition one of the following: 1) zero attention. 2) zero time. That is to say, we would have to accept that a person could read a book simply by having it scroll on a marquee on the bottom of a screen while watching cartoons. If this were true, we'd all have read Anna Karenina by now.

It's much, much more likely that we read the text and extrapolate the anime artwork we believe we're seeing while we read text. But I imagine the truth of the matter is somewhere in between and more complicated than all of that.

[monika]

[ QUOTE ]
Bitterman said:
That is to say, we would have to accept that a person could read a book simply by having it scroll on a marquee on the bottom of a screen while watching cartoons. If this were true, we'd all have read Anna Karenina by now.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the cartoon in question is Anna Karenina, all the action is rendered in video, and the subtitles of the dialogue move at the same pace as the story on the screen, of course.

There's plenty of interpolation and extrapolation going on, yes, but it takes effectively 0 time.

The eye oscillates at a rate of 60 frames per second. This is the oscillation that keeps a significant part of what you're looking at directly in fovea. In addition, you get between 50 and 5 frames per second of larger eye movements, (depending on how extreme these eye movements are. I'd say if you're looking at a screen that isn't ridiculously huge, you're on the high end of that.) That's the eye movement that expands your focused range even farther when you're not explicitly concentrating on one thing, or in the case where you're looking at something specific and at subtitles, switches back and forth between them. Anime tends to be animated at what, around 12, 13 cels a second, and played at 24? Subtitles last what, four seconds on average?

For me and for many sub watchers I've talked to, turning on subtitles is like turning on a universal translator. You hardly notice them, and you magically understand what everyone's saying. If you don't understand what someone said, then you explicitly check out the subtitles, but that doesn't happen for most lines in your average show.

Edit: Numbers came from Wikipedia.

[ QUOTE ]
monika said:
There's plenty of interpolation and extrapolation going on, yes, but it takes effectively 0 time.


[/ QUOTE ]
Reading is hardly effectively instantaneous. Perception is pretty fast, yes. The human brain can go from light hitting the retina to a processed, conscious imagine in roughly 1/10th of a second. That's pretty good. But does that mean we read at that rate? Hardly. Let's suppose that a person can take in an average "eyeful" of text of roughly five words. That's something like:

I can read this sentence.

Let's further suppose that a person can take in that five words every 1/10th of a second. Every second, a person would take in 50 words. Every minute, 3000 words. A novel is somewhere around 100,000-120,000 words. At that rate, a person would take in a novel in roughly 40 minutes.

I'm pulling numbers out of thin air on this one, and I'll be the first to admit it, but I'd guess that reading a full line of subtitles takes something in the ballpark of 0.5-1.0 seconds. That's not functionally equivalent to zero for the amount of text in the average anime.

Now, is that time enough to make a viewer uncomfortable? Is it enough to distract a viewer? Is it intrusive? I don't know the answer to those questions. I'm sure it varies from person to person. But regardless of the answer, the original poster's point stands. Adding text to a visual field adds cognitive load, and text is not attentionally equivalent to non-language imagery. It requires considerably more processing and concentration, even if the viewer is not consciously aware of that processing and concentration.

[monika]

&lt;Deleting an incredibly sloppy post written in a rush. I might rewrite it later if I have time.&gt;

[monika]

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Bitterman said:
Adding text to a visual field adds cognitive load, and text is not attentionally equivalent to non-language imagery. It requires considerably more processing and concentration, even if the viewer is not consciously aware of that processing and concentration.

[/ QUOTE ]

:p I'd say language-based input is much easier to comprehend than non-language input. That's why we have language.

[Atomsk]

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monika said:
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Atomsk said:
It's nice then when you notice some hints to events that happen later on.

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OhGodTouch ::clutches mouth and runs away::

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Thanks for sharing that with us. /images/graemlins/icon_rolleyes.gif

[monika]

I'm sorry, I'm clearly not adding enough content to this thread. Next time I'll be sure to phrase it "Touch is a wonderful example of this."

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monika said:
:p I'd say language-based input is much easier to comprehend than non-language input. That's why we have language.

[/ QUOTE ]
Easy? Maybe. Depends on how you define the term. If you mean there are specialized faculties in place to process the information, then yes that's absolutely true. If you're talking about absolute cognitive load, then language requires considerably more processing.

Imagine that a person sees two murals. One looks like:

This is the man all tattered and torn who kissed the maiden all forlorn.

and the other looks like:

ewafnjt ;ntahe at;hthaeth ath;kathnxs theth/kanth /thtakhnea a/rkgner

The first requires more cognitive load because it's language. The brains sees it and goes through the usual routine. Parses it, analyzes it for meaning, etc. But the second? It takes it in, starts to parse, realizes it's garbage, and stops. If the second mural had been a painting, the cognitive load would likely have been even less.

Language, particularly oral language, feels seamless and simple to people. But that's true because we dedicate huge areas of the brain to it, not because it's a trivial task.

[Tomcat]

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monika said:
:p I'd say language-based input is much easier to comprehend than non-language input. That's why we have language.

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Bitterman said:
Language, particularly oral language, feels seamless and simple to people. But that's true because we dedicate huge areas of the brain to it, not because it's a trivial task.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've given this quite a bit of thought in the past. I have been trying to figure out how a child learns to communicate, and translate that to an easy way for an adult to lear a new language. I figure it's broken down to three stages.

First stage is image, or pure visual. You see a dog, and know that it's a dog. You may not know that it is called a "dog", but that doesn't matter. You recognize it instinctively. Surely early human used a picture of a dog to convey that they meant a dog. The brain needs no further processing.

After knowing what dog is, you have to learn that the word for the animal is "dog". You need to learn how to day it. In a child, this is usually learning the words for what you want. Probably why most children learn "mommy" or "daddy" as their first words. They can't form sentences yet, but can convey that they want something in one word. Yet, even this spoken language must be converted to what they already know. Something like, "dog" means that fuzzy thing in the back yard with the bad smell and wet nose that likes to lick me. But, this is all in imagery, not in words in the brain.

The next stage is written language. The first think you have to do it convert the "d", "o" and "g" into the spoken word "dog", then convert that into the meaning of the word.

I think this is why we are first taught to read out loud. Even after we read silently, we still read the same way, just don't vocalize what we read. I still pronounce every word in my head, and then translate it from there.

So... I'd say that written language is one of the most difficult thing a human brain can do for communication. Spoken language is not as difficult, especially for a fully developed brain, and it takes very little for the brain to recognize images.

Even a cat can recognize it's "owner".

Of course, this thread is about you look at the second time you watch something. I often go back and forth between watching the main action, and what else may be going on. Of course, I try to keep up with the subtitles, even on the 3rd, 4th and subsequent viewings.

-TC

[Redcoffin]

"The Symbolic Species" by Terrence Deacon is a good introduction to how language works. It's ten years old and some stuff has been learned since then, but Deacon gets the reader up to speed on what's going on in the field. Suffice it to say, it's complicated!

In all honesty, it's a rare, rare show I look at more than once. With all the shows and movies coming out, I cannot watch them as fast as I put them into my rental queue. That said, those rare shows I fixate on with lunatic zeal. The plain truth is that I watch "everything" the second time also! /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif