Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Fluent event processing appears to critically involveselectively attending to information-rich junctures withincontinuously unfolding sensory streams (e.g., Newtson, 1973).What counts as information-rich would seem to depend on avariety of factors, however, including the novelty/familiarityof such events, as well as local opportunity for repeatedviewings. Using Hard, Recchia, & Tversky’s “Dwell-timeParadigm,” we investigated the extent to which viewers’attention to unfolding activity streams is affected bynovelty/familiarity and a second viewing. Viewers’ dwelltimes were recorded as they advanced twice each through threeslideshows varying in familiarity but equated on otherdimensions. Dwell time patterns revealed reorganization on anumber of fronts: a) familiarity elicited decreased dwellingoverall, b) dwell-time patterns changed systematically onsecond viewing, and c) familiarity modulated the specificnature of change associated with repeated viewing. Thesefindings illuminate reorganization in attention as actioninformation is first encountered and then quickly incorporatedto guide event processing.