Media Exposure and Neurobiological Theories & Methods

Abstract

Media exposure is an inherently dynamic process. Whether we are watching TV, listening to music, or scrolling through the latest news feed, our brains continuously parse incoming sensory information into coherent, interconnected, and meaningful units. Notably, these complex computational transformations often appear intuitively and without conscious awareness, owing to the evolved, functionally-specialized circuits that constitute our neurobiological make-up. The conceptualization of media exposure as a dynamic process – enabled and orchestrated by an ensemble of biological systems – has sparked an exciting, interdisciplinary field of research. At the same time, the paradigm shift frombehaviorism towards information processing has also raised an intricatemethodological debate: Can we reliably measure the opaque cognitive processing ofmedia content in real time? In this chapter, we review efforts to tackle this question,providing the reader with a critical discussion of psychophysiological measurements that continuously monitor individuals’ cognition’s during media exposure. Rather than developing a comprehensive introduction and inventory, weherein take a broader perspective, focusing on what dynamic measures can (and cannot) reveal about media exposure, followed by a discussion of recurrent validity and reliability issues and attempts towards their mitigation. In the end, we briefly discuss how technological advancements and rising societal questions may shape the future of psychophysiological media research.