Abstract
Objective measurements of engagement are increasingly sought after by both the media industry and scholar communities to explain what drives people to consume audiovisual contents. However, engagement is a complex construct that, at the psychological level, has been mainly operationalised through indicators of attentional and emotional processes, often overlooking motivational factors. We claim that in the context of news consumption, motivation, operationalised as intrinsic interest for consuming a given content, needs to be factored in together with attentional and emotional processes. The present work provides an objective metric for motivation based on electroencephalographic (EEG) registration of users' neural activity, while they read sets of news pre-classified in terms of their potential interest. We focus on a metric that has been used as an indicator of the degree to which an item or event induces the motivation to approach or escape, the so called frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). Moreover, in addition to the traditional approach to the analysis of EEG signals, we also introduce a more novel technique based on estimating the entropy of the signals. Results confirm that FAA is indeed a good proxy for objective monitoring of interest in media contents and that entropy analysis, although its interpretation in terms of information processing warrants further investigation, is also sensitive to the manipulation of interest, providing results that complement traditional power spectrum analysis.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7878633 |
| Pages (from-to) | 100-114 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
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Keywords
- EEG
- entropy analysis
- news consumption
- predictive modelling
- spectral analysis
- User engagement
Cite this
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Interest as a Proxy of Engagement in News Reading : Spectral and Entropy Analyses of EEG Activity Patterns. / Arapakis, Ioannis; Barreda-Angeles, Miguel; Pereda-Banos, Alexandre.
In: IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, Vol. 10, No. 1, 7878633, 01.01.2019, p. 100-114.Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review
TY - JOUR
T1 - Interest as a Proxy of Engagement in News Reading
T2 - Spectral and Entropy Analyses of EEG Activity Patterns
AU - Arapakis, Ioannis
AU - Barreda-Angeles, Miguel
AU - Pereda-Banos, Alexandre
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - Objective measurements of engagement are increasingly sought after by both the media industry and scholar communities to explain what drives people to consume audiovisual contents. However, engagement is a complex construct that, at the psychological level, has been mainly operationalised through indicators of attentional and emotional processes, often overlooking motivational factors. We claim that in the context of news consumption, motivation, operationalised as intrinsic interest for consuming a given content, needs to be factored in together with attentional and emotional processes. The present work provides an objective metric for motivation based on electroencephalographic (EEG) registration of users' neural activity, while they read sets of news pre-classified in terms of their potential interest. We focus on a metric that has been used as an indicator of the degree to which an item or event induces the motivation to approach or escape, the so called frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). Moreover, in addition to the traditional approach to the analysis of EEG signals, we also introduce a more novel technique based on estimating the entropy of the signals. Results confirm that FAA is indeed a good proxy for objective monitoring of interest in media contents and that entropy analysis, although its interpretation in terms of information processing warrants further investigation, is also sensitive to the manipulation of interest, providing results that complement traditional power spectrum analysis.
AB - Objective measurements of engagement are increasingly sought after by both the media industry and scholar communities to explain what drives people to consume audiovisual contents. However, engagement is a complex construct that, at the psychological level, has been mainly operationalised through indicators of attentional and emotional processes, often overlooking motivational factors. We claim that in the context of news consumption, motivation, operationalised as intrinsic interest for consuming a given content, needs to be factored in together with attentional and emotional processes. The present work provides an objective metric for motivation based on electroencephalographic (EEG) registration of users' neural activity, while they read sets of news pre-classified in terms of their potential interest. We focus on a metric that has been used as an indicator of the degree to which an item or event induces the motivation to approach or escape, the so called frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). Moreover, in addition to the traditional approach to the analysis of EEG signals, we also introduce a more novel technique based on estimating the entropy of the signals. Results confirm that FAA is indeed a good proxy for objective monitoring of interest in media contents and that entropy analysis, although its interpretation in terms of information processing warrants further investigation, is also sensitive to the manipulation of interest, providing results that complement traditional power spectrum analysis.
KW - EEG
KW - entropy analysis
KW - news consumption
KW - predictive modelling
KW - spectral analysis
KW - User engagement
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85060405338&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85060405338&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TAFFC.2017.2682089
DO - 10.1109/TAFFC.2017.2682089
M3 - Article
VL - 10
SP - 100
EP - 114
JO - IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
JF - IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
SN - 1949-3045
IS - 1
M1 - 7878633
ER -