PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Daniel C. Richardson
AU  - Nicole K. Griffin
AU  - Lara Zaki
AU  - Auburn Stephenson
AU  - Jiachen Yan
AU  - Thomas Curry
AU  - Richard Noble
AU  - John Hogan
AU  - Jeremy I. Skipper
AU  - Joseph T. Devlin
TI  - Measuring narrative engagement: The heart tells the story
AID  - 10.1101/351148
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 351148
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/13/351148.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/13/351148.full
AB  - Stories play a fundamental role in human culture. They provide a mechanism for sharing cultural identity, imparting knowledge, revealing beliefs, reinforcing social bonds and providing entertainment that is central to all human societies. Here we investigated the extent to which the delivery medium of a story (audio or visual) affected conscious and subconscious engagement with the narrative. Although participants self-reported greater involvement for watching video relative to listening to auditory scenes, stronger physiological responses were recorded for auditory stories. Sensors placed at their wrists showed higher and more variable heart rates, greater electrodermal activity, and even higher body temperatures. We interpret these findings as physiological evidence that the stories were more cognitively and emotionally engaging when presented in an auditory format. This may be because listening to a story, rather than watching a video, is a more active process of co-creation, and that this imaginative process in the listener’s mind is detectable on the skin at their wrist.