scholarly journals The Coupled Brains of Captivated Audiences

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 187-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf Schmälzle ◽  
Clare Grall
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
Response Measurement ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
Continuous Response ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Motivated Attention ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Fmri Time Series ◽  
The Moment

Abstract. Suspense not only creates a strong psychological tension within individuals, but it does so reliably across viewers who become collectively engaged with the story. Despite its prevalence in media psychology, limited work has examined suspense from a media neuroscience perspective, and thus the biological underpinnings of suspense remain unknown. Here we examine continuous brain responses of 494 viewers watching a suspenseful movie. To create a time-resolved measure of the degree to which a movie aligns audience-wide brain responses, we computed dynamic inter-subject correlations of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time series among all viewers using sliding-window analysis. In parallel, we captured in-the-moment reports of suspense in an independent sample via continuous response measurement (CRM). We found that dynamic inter-subject correlations over the course of the movie tracked well with the reported suspense in the CRM sample, particularly in regions associated with emotional salience and higher cognitive processes. These results are compatible with theoretical views on motivated attention and psychological tension. The finding that fMRI-based audience response measurement relates to audience reports of suspense creates new opportunities for research on the mechanisms of suspense and other entertainment phenomena and has applied potential for measuring audience responses in a nonreactive and objective fashion.

Diplomacy, agency, and the logic of improvisation and virtuosity in practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 712-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Cornut
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Norm Compliance ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Practical Reality ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Past Experiences

Immersed in the flow of activities, diplomats and other international practitioners are simultaneously influenced by past experiences and constantly innovating in response to situations that are never exactly the same. The conceptual tools of International Relations scholars must be capable of capturing this practical reality. To that end, I introduce in this article a relational approach to agency that can make sense of practitioners’ innovative ways of doing things in practice. Practice theorists in IR often emphasize hierarchies, struggle, and the role of habitus in shaping practices. Both building on and departing from them, I dig into the logic of practical sense and discuss Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of regulated improvisations, virtuosos/amateurs, and illusio to grasp agency in practice. I develop the idea that international actors are primarily practical and put improvisations and virtuosity — rather than rationality, cognitive processes, emotions, norm-compliance, path-dependency or even habits/habitus — in the foreground. I contend that this approach holds broader promise for the analysis of international politics than existing conceptions. We have much to gain by focusing on how international practitioners in their local contexts actually improvise in the moment. These improvisations in specific sites are constitutive of the ‘big picture’ of international politics. I take diplomatic practices in embassies and in permanent representations as an illustration.

Noticing Aloud: Uncovering Mathematics Teacher Noticing in the Moment

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Jen Munson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Mathematics Teacher ◽  
New Technique ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Teacher Noticing ◽  
Student Work ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
A New Technique ◽  
The Moment

Understanding mathematics teacher noticing has been the focus of a growing body of research, in which student work and classroom videos are often used as artifacts for surfacing teachers’ cognitive processes. However, what teachers notice through reflecting on artifacts of teaching may not be parallel to what they notice in the complex and demanding environment of the classroom. This article used a new technique, side-by-side coaching, to uncover teacher noticing in the moment of instruction. There were 21 instances of noticing aloud during side by side coaching which were analyzed and classified, yielding 6 types of teacher noticing aloud, including instances in which teachers expressed confidence, struggle, and wonder. Implications for coaching and future research on teacher noticing are discussed.

DC-magnetoencephalography and time-resolved near-infrared spectroscopy combined to study neuronal and vascular brain responses

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 651-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
T H Sander ◽  
A Liebert ◽  
B M Mackert ◽  
H Wabnitz ◽  
S Leistner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
Brain Responses

scholarly journals Target of selective auditory attention can be robustly followed with MEG

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dovilė Kurmanavičiūtė ◽  
Antti Rantala ◽  
Mainak Jas ◽  
Anne Välilä ◽  
Lauri Parkkonen
Keyword(s):  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
Auditory Evoked Responses ◽  
Spatially Resolved ◽  
Auditory Responses ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Source Level ◽  
The Right

AbstractSelective auditory attention enables filtering relevant from irrelevant acoustic information. Specific auditory responses, measurable by electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG), are known to be modulated by attention to the evoking stimuli. However, these attention effects are typically demonstrated in averaged responses and their robustness in single trials is not studied extensively.We applied decoding algorithms to MEG to investigate how well the target of auditory attention could be determined from single responses and which spatial and temporal aspects of the responses carry most of the information regarding the target of attention. To this end, we recorded brain responses of 15 healthy subjects with MEG when they selectively attended to one of the simultaneously presented auditory streams of words “Yes” and “No”. A support vector machine was trained on the MEG data both at the sensor and source level to predict at every trial which stream was attended.Sensor-level decoding of the attended stream using the entire 2-s epoch resulted in a mean accuracy of 93%±1% (range 83–99% across subjects). Time-resolved decoding revealed that the highest accuracies were obtained 200–350 ms after the stimulus onset. Spatially-resolved source-level decoding indicated that the cortical sources most informative of the attended stream were located primarily in the auditory cortex, especially in the right hemi-sphere.Our result corroborates attentional modulation of auditory evoked responses also to naturalistic stimuli. The achieved high decoding accuracy could enable the use of our experimental paradigm and classification method in a brain–computer interface.

scholarly journals Audience responses and the context of political speeches

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 601-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyangmi Choi ◽  
Peter Bull ◽  
Darren Reed
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Campaign Speeches ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
Audience Behavior

Previous studies showed that cultural dimensions (individualism and collectivism) are related to audience behavior in responding to political speeches. However, this study suggests that speech context is an important issue to be considered in understanding speaker-audience interaction in political speeches. Forms of response, audience behavior, and response rates were analyzed in three speech contexts: acceptance speeches to nomination as political parties’ candidates for presidential election, presidential election campaign speeches, and presidential inauguration speeches in the Korean presidential election of 2012. We found that audience response forms and behavior were distinctive according to the three speech contexts: in-group partisan leadership, competitive, and formal contexts. However, there was no relationship between the affiliative response rate and electoral success in the election. The function of the audience response is popularity and support of a speaker in acceptance and election campaign speeches, while it is conformity to social norms in inauguration speeches.

Tracking Performance Correlates of Changes in Perceived Intensity of Emotion During Different Interpretations of a Chopin Piano Prelude

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Sloboda ◽  
Andreas C. Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
Phase 1 ◽  
Computer Interface ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Continuous Response ◽  
Comprehensive Method ◽  
Mouse Pointer ◽  
Systematic Relationships ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Intensity Of Emotion

This study demonstrates a comprehensive method for linking expert musicians' interpretive choices and associated performances to listeners' perceptions of emotionality. In Phase 1 of the study, 10 expert pianists recorded their prepared interpretations of a highly emotional piece of music (F. Chopin's Prelude op. 28, no. 4). They were also interviewed about their deliberate interpretive choices. In Phase 2, 28 musicians listened to the interpretations and provided postperformance ratings of expressivity and other performance aspects. During listening, subjects moved a mouse pointer on a continuous response computer interface, rating the moment-to-moment (concurrent) level of perceived emotionality. The correlation between postperformance ratings of expressivity and mean concurrent ratings was moderate (.50). In general, musical structure and the trajectory (trace) of concurrent emotionality ratings corresponded strongly. Statistically reliable trace divergences between individual performances and the grand mean performance demonstrated systematic relationships between emotionality ratings and performance data (loudness, timing). Increases in emotionality appear to be caused by specific local deviations from the performance characteristics of an average performance. Interpretive choices clustered at musical phrase boundaries. Many of the analyzed divergences were reflected in performers' interpretive intentions as revealed in interview data.

Global Constructions of ‘Korupsi’ in a Local Public Sphere: A Cross-Cultural Malaysian Reception Study

2002 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125
Author(s):  
Tony Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Television News ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Reception Study ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
News Programs

Audience responses to television are at the heart of sense-making in the public sphere. Research on viewers' readings of economic, political and social events in news programs, invariably constructed around the activities of ‘significant’ individuals, is of particular consequence for understanding the functioning of a democracy. This paper is a cross-cultural reception study of how audiences come to interpret the program genre of television news. In a process of comprehension characterised by fusing/feuding horizons of understanding the world, viewers playfully accommodate the meaning of programs in their everyday lives. Analysis of television's reception should be tested against audience activity. Theory must be corroborated. Drawing from a significant literature discussing the phenomenology of ludic experience, the article theorises trans-cultural reception of Western (British) television by Asian (Malaysian) viewers as seriously ‘playful’. Academic assertions are assessed as illuminating audience response.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document