Dillon, Catherine. 2007. Emotional Responses to Immersive Media. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

The five experiments presented in this thesis aimed to investigate the relationship
between subjective presence (the sense of 'being there' in a mediated environment) and
subjective and physiological emotional responses. The investigation served as an initial
step in the evaluation of emotion-based corroborative measures of presence.
Two of the determinants of presence (Media Form and Media Content) were
experimentally manipulated in order to create varying levels of presence and different
types of subjective and physiological emotional responses. Varying levels of presence
were created by manipulating Media Form characteristics in the context of a video
display - specifically, the absence and presence of stereoscopic cues (Experiments I
and 2) and small versus large eye-to-screen visual angles (Experiments 3 and 5). Media
Content (video clips) with varying types of emotional impact was presented to
participants via the video displays (Experiments I, 2, 3 and 5). The research showed
that enhancements in Media Form increased both subjective presence and subjective
arousal across all Content types. However, there was little evidence to show that Media
Form manipulations affected physiological arousal, indicating limited utility for
physiological measures of presence in this context.
Media Content characteristics were investigated in more depth in Experiments 4 and 5.
Differences in SUbjective presence between Media Contents shown to elicit different
types of subjective emotion were investigated and correlations between subjective
presence and subjective emotion were examined. The research indicated that the quality
and intensity of emotional responses elicited by Media Content are potentially important
determinants of subjective presence.
The thesis concludes by suggesting that in further investigations of presence and
emotion, which aim to identify corroborative measures of presence, it may be useful to
analyse the relationship between different dimensions of presence (physical Space,
Naturalness and Engagement) and different components of emotional responses
(Subjective, Cognitive, Behavioural and Physiological).

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Keywords:	presence theory, media form, media content, emotion, cognitive, behavioural,
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Date:	2007
Item ID:	22670
Date Deposited:	03 Jan 2018 11:48
Last Modified:	12 Sep 2022 14:07
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/22670

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