IQ tests have charted massive gains over the last century, known as the Flynn Effect. Over the same period, the time society spends with screens has massively increased and intensified, for example, shorter and closer shots, increasing narrative complexity. In Movies on our Minds (2021), James Cutting suggests a potential bidirectional link between the two effects: generational increase in visual processing abilities led to movie makers increasing the demands their movies place on viewer cognition, which in turn has trained societal visual processing capacity. In this commentary we review the evidence for such a positive association. The evidence indicates that increasing screen time may be associated with faster visual processing but also a potentially decreased ability to process this information (i.e., reduced executive functions). Further, effects may be dependent on the type of screen experience (e.g., developmental appropriateness of content and delivery platform such as TikTok) and other environmental considerations (e.g., socioeconomic status, parenting), suggesting that the factors influencing our evolving media/mind niche may be more complex than originally proposed.
Tim J. Smith, BSc. Hons, PhD, is professor of cognitive psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London and head of the Cognition in Naturalistic Environments (CINE) Lab. He studied artificial intelligence and psychology (joint honors) in Edinburgh (1997–2001) and then completed a PhD in the School of Informatics at Edinburgh in which he developed “An Attentional Theory of Continuity” (2006/2012). He applies empirical cognitive psychology methods to questions of film cognition and has published on the subject both in psychology and film journals. Email: tj.smith@bbk.ac.uk
Claire Essex BSc (Hons), MSc, is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London. She studied psychology (with honors) at Birkbeck, University of London (2013–2017) before completing an MSc in educational neuroscience at Birkbeck and the Institute of Education, University College London (2017/2018). She is interested in the impact of media content properties on children's developing attention and executive function skills. Specifically, her research examines how low-level visual features (i.e., flicker, motion, editing techniques) and higher-level semantic properties (i.e., indices of time and space; novel events such as impossible character transformations) combine to impact viewer cognition differentially at different stages of development.
Rachael Bedford, BA, PhD, is an associate professor in developmental psychology at the University of Bath and director of the Bath Babylab. She completed her undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford (2005–2008) and her PhD at the Institute of Education, University of London (2009-2012). Her research is focused on how early risk and resilience factors in infancy influence developmental trajectories, including the role of screen time in cognitive development.