Where people look when watching movies: Do all viewers look at the same place?

Magnification around the most important point of a movie scene (center of interest-COI) might aid people with visual impairments that cause resolution loss. This will be effective only if most people look at the same place when watching a movie. We recorded the eye movements of 20 normally sighted subjects as each watched six movie clips, totaling 37.5 min. More than half of the time the distribution of subject gaze points fell within an area statistic that was less than 12% of the movie scene. Male and older subjects were more likely to look in the same place than female and younger subjects, respectively. We conclude that the between-subject agreement is sufficient to make the approach practical.

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