A Visual Representation and the Prediction of Emotion

Many scholars believe that news images affect public opinion about political and social issues. Previous research has shown that emotionally evocative visual news texts improve learning and memory for information as well as affect audience perspectives on relevant issues. However, the majority of these studies do not address in detail what combinations of characteristics create emotionally compelling images. Through content analysis of news photographs and both quantitative and qualitative measurement of viewer’s response to those images, this study begins to define what visual characteristics contribute significantly to emotional impact. The results of the content analysis also contribute to our understanding of what types of photographs appear most frequently in the news. The results show that features generally characterized by communication researchers as improving memory and learning: extreme negativity and deviation from normal visual experience were not well represented among the sample of 400 photographs from the Associated Press Photo Archive. Although the majority of photographs (65%) did have negative themes, only 5% of the images showed any kind of violence. Ten percent displayed the outcome of a non-violent disaster. The large majority of pictures were also photographed using vertical camera axes and straight angles. A sample of images from the iv content analysis was used as stimuli in the viewer-response portion of the study. Measures of the content served as independent variables in two regression analyses. The dependent variables were viewers’ level of either positive or negative affect. Significant predictors of negative affect included the presence of violence, the effects of violence, and the effects of disaster. Negative emotional displays by the subject(s) of the image, and unusual juxtapositions of people and/or objects also predicted negative affect. A separate regression analysis was conducted for positive affect. The presence of violence, unusual juxtapositions of objects, and negative emotional displays had significant, but negative, relationships with positive affect. Positive emotional displays and viewing the more central subjects in the image from the front significantly and directly predicted positive affect. Finally, the degree of closeness among subjects in the image also significantly predicted positive affect. Analysis of open-ended responses generally supports these results

Measuring environments for public displays: a Space Syntax approach

This paper reports on an on-going project, which is investigating the role that location plays in the visibility of information presented on a public display. Spatial measures are presented, derived from the architectural theory of Space Syntax. These are shown to relate to the memorability of words and images presented on different displays. Results show a complex pattern of interactions between the size and shape of spaces in which displays are situated and the memorability of different types of representations depicted. This approach offers a new way to consider the role of space in guiding and constraining interaction in real settings: a growing concern within HCI and Ubicomp

Macaque cardiac physiology is sensitive to the valence of passively viewed sensory stimuli.

Autonomic nervous system activity is an important component of affective experience. We demonstrate in the rhesus monkey that both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system respond differentially to the affective valence of passively viewed video stimuli. We recorded cardiac impedance and an electrocardiogram while adult macaques watched a series of 300 30-second videos that varied in their affective content. We found that sympathetic activity (as measured by cardiac pre-ejection period) increased and parasympathetic activity (as measured by respiratory sinus arrhythmia) decreased as video content changes from positive to negative. These findings parallel the relationship between autonomic nervous system responsivity and valence of stimuli in humans. Given the relationship between human cardiac physiology and affective processing, these findings suggest that macaque cardiac physiology may be an index of affect in nonverbal animals

A perceptual comparison of empirical and predictive region-of-interest video

When viewing multimedia presentations, a user only attends to a relatively small part of the video display at any one point in time. By shifting allocation of bandwidth from peripheral areas to those locations where a user’s gaze is more likely to rest, attentive displays can be produced. Attentive displays aim to reduce resource requirements while minimizing negative user perception—understood in this paper as not only a user’s ability to assimilate and understand information but also his/her subjective satisfaction with the video content. This paper introduces and discusses a perceptual comparison between two region-of-interest display (RoID) adaptation techniques. A RoID is an attentive display where bandwidth has been preallocated around measured or highly probable areas of user gaze. In this paper, video content was manipulated using two sources of data: empirical measured data (captured using eye-tracking technology) and predictive data (calculated from the physical characteristics of the video data). Results show that display adaptation causes significant variation in users’ understanding of specific multimedia content. Interestingly, RoID adaptation and the type of video being presented both affect user perception of video quality. Moreover, the use of frame rates less than 15 frames per second, for any video adaptation technique, caused a significant reduction in user perceived quality, suggesting that although users are aware of video quality reduction, it does impact level of information assimilation and understanding. Results also highlight that user level of enjoyment is significantly affected by the type of video yet is not as affected by the quality or type of video adaptation—an interesting implication in the field of entertainment