Continuous measures of audience immersion: validating behavioural and physiological measures against self-report

Abstract

When an audience member becomes immersed, attention is shifted towards the media and story, and this is accompanied by the allocation of mental resources to represent events and characters. Here we investigate whether it is possible to measure immersion using continuous behavioural or physiological measures. Using television and film clips, we validated dual-task reaction times, heart rate, and skin conductance against self-reported narrative engagement. We find that reaction times in the dual-task were strongly positively correlated with immersion: slower reaction times were indicative of greater immersion, particularly emotional engagement. Synchrony in heart rate between participants was associated with attentional and emotional engagement with the story, although we found no such relationship with skin conductance. These results establish both dual-task reaction times and heart rate as candidate measures for the real-time, continuous, assessment of audience immersion.

The Power of Emotional Engagement: Tamil Television Serials as a Trail to Enhance Well-being and Successful Ageing among Older Adults

“…The immersive power of television serials through emotional engagement and connection provides older adults a satisfying life and well-being, which could extend successful ageing. The potential elements of television, such as its narrative style and characters, create an immersive state where viewers can forget the real world and have a positive influence on emotional well-being (Hammond et al, 2023; McTernan et al, 2023). Whether knowingly or unknowingly, engaging with television serials can help people forget their real-life problems and escape from their worries.…”

Measuring real-time cognitive engagement in remote audiences

“…While task-unrelated thought indicates low engagement, task-related thought can be seen as engagement in the form of "re ection" or "sense-making." Both types of mindwandering suppose reduced attention to primary content and may present as such on objective measures, including reaction times 13,19 and movement 20 .…”