Battle for Attention: How Style and Narration Control Gaze in Dual-Screen Viewing — data and analysis code

Dataset and analysis code accompanying the poster Battle for Attention: How Style and Narration Control Gaze in Dual-Screen Viewing, presented at the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI) Annual Conference, Amsterdam, 2026.

Study overview

Sixty-four participants (CP: n = 33, fixed TikTok playlist; EV: n = 31, free TikTok browsing; age M = 20.7 ± 3.4 years; 53% female) watched TV clips (Emily in Paris, Reacher, Slow TV; ~36 min of stimuli) while simultaneously using a tablet with TikTok short-form video. Gaze was recorded continuously with Pupil Labs Invisible mobile eye-tracking glasses. Two areas of interest were defined: the TV screen and the tablet. Tablet audio was muted throughout; the TV was the sole audio source.

The study examined which formal properties of TV content attract gaze back to the screen during dual-screen viewing. Three findings emerged: (1) salient auditory events increased the probability of a tablet-to-TV gaze return from 17.2% to 24.2% (OR = 1.57, p = .003); (2) expressive close-up faces in Emily in Paris more than doubled the return probability relative to neutral faces (31.3% vs 13.3%; OR = 2.33, p < .001); (3) shot type predicted attentional balance — POV shots showed the highest net Tab→TV pull (+2.18 switches/min), with Reaction shots second (+1.02).

Repository contents

Raw gaze data are not shared (participant privacy). The repository contains:

• csv files — aggregated summary statistics: switch probability tables, descriptive switch rates by shot type, and shot-level face annotation lookup.
• R scripts — three R scripts reproducing all poster results from raw data: SNAP_E2_sound.R (salient sound → gaze switching), SNAP_E2_expressive.R (expressive faces → gaze switching), SNAP_E2_shots.R (shot type ↔ switch rates). 
• figures — the three poster figures at 300 DPI (PNG).

Ethics

Approved by the Royal Holloway University of London Research Ethics Committee, Reference ID: 753 (approved 27 August 2025; project end 31 December 2026).

Funding

This work was supported from OP JAC Project "MSCA Fellowships at Palacký University III.", CZ.02.01.01/00/22_010/0008685, co-funded by the European Union and run at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Conference

Poster presented at the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI) Annual Conference, Amsterdam, 2026.