ABSTRACT
When people watch a movie, one of the viewers’ basic goals is to have a coherent understanding of what they are watching. To accomplish this, viewers construct mental representations of the movie as the movie unfolds. This representation includes information about the characters and situations within the movie, and prior expectations based on knowledge about the genre of movies, the director, and the actors and actresses starring in the movie. This combination of information provides the basis for understanding the movie as it unfolds and for predicting future events in the movie. Unfortunately, little research has focused on how people create a coherent understanding of what they are watching (but see Livingstone, 1987, 1989, 1990a, 1990b; Morley, 1992, 19890/1999). That is, communication scholars have tended to ignore comprehension, including in the first edition of Communication and Social Cognition (Berger & Roloff, 1982). However, a major breakthrough in the study of comprehension occurred in cognitive psychology the year after the first edition was published.
