Adoption of mobile devices (e.g., smart phones and tablets) has popularized a neck-down posture during media consumption that is different from the traditional upright body posture for video viewing. A neck-down posture exerts substantial pressure upon the spine, and this posture has been previously linked to psychological effects. This study advances the literature by studying the impact of posture effects on processing audiovisual information. In a mixed design experiment ( N = 87), the effect of neck posture when viewing 24 video PSAs was tested using physiological and self-report measures. Multilevel modeling analyses of heart rate and corrugator data showed that spinal flexion lowered attentional engagement and caused incongruent emotional responses to the messages compared to a neutral spine posture. However, spinal-flexion participants exhibited greater skin conductance, counter to the predicted emotional disengagement. The impact of neck posture on message processing was largest at the beginning of the experiment and faded over time.

Studies in different languages have identified a broadcast speaking style, a particular manner that broadcasters have of reading news. This speaking style is characterized by an emphatic intonation with a fast speech rate easily recognizable by listeners. Some authors have stated that messages in this style are not positively perceived by listeners, as it is repetitive and regular, but there is no empirical data to support this conclusion, nor has the style been analyzed with physiological measures. The physiological approach has some advantages, such as a more objective assessment and real-time evaluation. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effectiveness, adequacy, and physiological response of this broadcast style compared to a narrative pattern. We combined self-report with physiological measures. Fifty-six participants listened to six news pieces in both styles and with two voices, male and female. They had to rate the effectiveness and adequacy of the news while we measured their physiological responses (heart rate and electrodermal activity). The results showed that news conveyed through the broadcast style elicited less cognitive resource allocation and emotional arousal than the narrative pattern, but there were no significant differences in self-report evaluations.

Abstract. This study tests the effects of camera distance and camera angle on emotional response across four categories of pictures covering a large emotional range (positive and negative miscellanea, erotica, and threat), using the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) –a large database of emotionally evocative photographs. We content analyzed 722 images for the content category and camera framing (distance and angle), employing these as independent factors in analyses, and used the IAPS’ pre-existing normative average ratings of emotional valence, arousal, and dominance as dependent variables. As hypothesized, affective responses were generally increased by closer framing and high and low angles (compared to straight angles), but the content of the picture played an important role in determining effect strength and direction. In particular, closeness increased arousal for all picture groups but had the opposite effect on positive miscellaneous pictures, straight angles decreased the emotional response for the two miscellanea groups, and low angles increased the emotional response for threatening pictures. This study is the first to show that previously found camera framing effects apply to pictures of high emotional intensity (e.g., erotica and threat). We suggest that future work should consider formal manipulations alongside message content.