Miguel Barreda-Ángeles - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Miguel Barreda-Ángeles

Communications, 2017

This article proposes that syntactic features of newscasts can act as learned motivational stimul... more This article proposes that syntactic features of newscasts can act as learned motivational stimuli determining both viewers’ attention and memory for information. An experiment was conducted in which we manipulated the presence of stings (a type of widely used audiovisual connector) and the arousal levels of stories, while participants’ attention and recall of information were measured. The results suggest that stings elicit motivational activation among viewers; however, differences in motivational activation were observed depending on whether it was due to arousing content or to stings. These results highlight the relevance of accounting for learned motivational processes in media information processing research.

2017 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2017

Execution of cognitive stimulation interventions for cognitive training of individuals in need re... more Execution of cognitive stimulation interventions for cognitive training of individuals in need represents significant burden on caregivers in time and labor costs. Recent advancements in Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) research can be exploited to reduce caregivers burden by work sharing with robots and supplementing/complementing human resources in execution of interventions. Current research evaluates the effectiveness of the SAR empowered cognitive training activity of Bingo Musical among thirty individuals with ID in multi-center trials. A multidimensional evaluation of caregivers workload was conducted; including subjective workload, time spent on users personalized interventions, and qualitative interviews with caregivers. The results of the research confirm a significant reduction in caregivers burden and raise a concern about the need of a specific training of the caregivers to take maximum advantage of SAR in health care.

Comput. Educ., 2021

Virtual Reality (VR) is considered an effective way to boost empathy by adopting the perspective ... more Virtual Reality (VR) is considered an effective way to boost empathy by adopting the perspective of others, thus having clear potential for improving anti-bullying programs. However, this potential benefit of VR is limited by both the lack of adequate content and the lack of empirical evidence of its effectiveness. In this article, we present the process of co-creation of a set of 360°-videos representing the experience of victims of bullying from a first-person perspective, involving secondary school students (N = 89). The impact of bullying content and VR presentation in terms of emotional response was later assessed in an experiment (N = 35) in which we collected both participants’ self-reported and psychophysiological measures of emotional state during the viewing. The results support the effectiveness of VR in producing realistic emotional responses to the acts of bullying, although differences between self-reported and psychophysiological measures were observed. Lessons learne...

Estudios Sobre El Mensaje Periodistico, 2018

espanolEste articulo analiza el estatus del periodismo inmersivo en Espana mediante el estudio de... more espanolEste articulo analiza el estatus del periodismo inmersivo en Espana mediante el estudio de los contenidos en realidad virtual de los dos medios de comunicacion, El Pais y RTVE. A partir de las aportaciones teoricas existentes, se ha elaborado una matriz de analisis de las principales caracteristicas de los contenidos periodisticos inmersivos, y se ha aplicado esta al analisis de un total de 75 piezas publicadas por estos dos medios. Los resultados constatan que la produccion actual se basa en el uso de las tecnologias baratas y accesibles a los usuarios, pero con un potencial de interactividad muy limitado, y que el periodismo inmersivo en el ambito espanol aun se encuentra en una fase de experimentacion formal y de desarrollo de un lenguaje propio. EnglishThis article analyzes the status of immersive journalism in Spain by studying the contents in virtual reality published by two media: El Pais and RTVE. Grounding on the available theoretical contributions on the scientific ...

El analisis de la atencion que prestan los espectadores durante el consumo de contenidos de telev... more El analisis de la atencion que prestan los espectadores durante el consumo de contenidos de television es un aspecto fundamental para comprender los procesos de recepcion de los medios. En esta tesis se realiza una investigacion en torno a este tema que incluye una revision de los diferentes modelos teoricos y metodologias empleados para su estudio, asi como una propuesta teorica sobre los posibles efectos de las respuestas automaticas de atencion en la motivacion del espectador. En relacion con ello, tambien se presenta una investigacion experimental sobre los efectos de la imagen en alta definicion en la atencion y la motivacion de los espectadores, cuyos resultados aportan evidencias preliminares a favor de la propuesta teorica antes mencionada. Finalmente, se realiza una reflexion sobre el desarrollo futuro de esta cuestion tanto en el ambito de la investigacion academica como desde la perspectiva de la industria televisiva y publicitaria.

ABSTRACT En esta comunicación se presentan dos experimentos destinados a evaluar los efectos de l... more ABSTRACT En esta comunicación se presentan dos experimentos destinados a evaluar los efectos de la imagen en alta definición (HD) en los espectadores de televisión. Los resultados del primero de ellos muestran que la HD incrementa la atención visual (medida a través de los niveles de onda alfa cerebral), pero sólo en aquellos contenidos poco motivadores para los espectadores, y en el caso de espectadores suficientemente sensibles a dicha calidad de imagen. Los resultados del segundo experimento, por su parte, sugieren que, aun siendo poco conscientes de la diferencia entre calidades de imagen, los espectadores tienden a visionar más tiempo los canales en HD.

3D Visual Content Creation, Coding and Delivery

Traditionally, the quality of a multimedia system was mainly assessed through the evaluation of i... more Traditionally, the quality of a multimedia system was mainly assessed through the evaluation of its Quality of Service (QoS) that is by evaluating system parameters such as bandwidth, latency, jitter, throughput, transmission delay, availability, etc. However, these metrics often failed to capture the actual end-user perceived quality, which has prompted the development of the construct of Quality of Experience (QoE), widely understood as an interaction of the technical features of multimedia systems with perceptual, and cognitive/emotional factors involved in the interpretation of those features by users. This chapter addresses the open issues in the field of QoS and QoE assessments. First, the perceptual characteristics of the multiview content are analyzed, and then a survey on the existing approaches for QoS and QoE estimation is performed. The analysis is then focused on the subjective aspects of QoE assessment, by describing the standard methodologies currently used and new trends based on human factors research. Finally, the chapter offers a few guidelines for future research directions in the field.

Computers in Human Behavior

Social virtual reality (VR) platforms are an emergent phenomenon, with growing numbers of users u... more Social virtual reality (VR) platforms are an emergent phenomenon, with growing numbers of users utilizing them to connect with others while experiencing feelings of presence (“being there”). This article examines the associations between feelings of presence and the activities performed by users, and the psychological benefits obtained in terms of relatedness, self-expansion, and enjoyment, in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. The results of a survey conducted among users (N = 220) indicate that feelings of spatial presence predict these three outcomes, while social presence predicts relatedness and enjoyment, but not self-expansion. Socialization activities like meeting friends in VR are associated with relatedness and enjoyment, while playful and creative activities allow for self-expansion. Moreover, the perceived impact of social distancing measures was associated with an increase in use, suggesting the utility of these platforms to help users meeting particularly frustrated psychological needs. These results provide a first quantitative account of the potential positive effects of social VR platforms on users’ wellbeing and encourage further research on the topic.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking

Immersive storytelling is widely considered to have a great potential to foster empathy toward su... more Immersive storytelling is widely considered to have a great potential to foster empathy toward suffering people, as well as to provide enjoyable experiences able to attract wider audiences. This article examines how the immersive presentation of 360-video nonfiction contents impacts both empathy toward the characters and enjoyment of the experience and the interplay between these two psychological outcomes. Participants watched a series of 360-video stories presented either on a virtual reality headset or a screen, and measures of spatial presence, empathy (in terms of perspective taking and empathic concern), and enjoyment were collected. Mediation analyses and structural equation models showed a direct positive effect of spatial presence on perspective taking and empathic concern, and an indirect negative effect of immersive presentation on empathic concern through enjoyment. These findings indicate that enjoyment of pleasurable aspects of the experience may hinder the affective dimension of empathy toward the characters, and point out to the need to carefully consider the targeted reactions from the audience, since different intended psychological outcomes may not be fully compatible.

Journal of Product & Brand Management

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine how sonic logo’s acoustic features (intensity, ... more Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine how sonic logo’s acoustic features (intensity, pitch and pace) based on melodic tunes with no voice orient the response of consumers, attract attention, elicit levels of pleasantness and calmness and transmit brand personality traits. Design/methodology/approach A within-subject experimental factorial design is applied to measure emotional arousal (indexed as electrodermal activity) and enhancement on perceptual processing (indexed as heart rate), as well as self-reported factors, namely, calmness/excitement, pleasantness and brand personality scales. Findings Results show a significant increase on electrodermal activity associated with fast-paced sonic logos and a decrease in heart rate in slow-paced long sonic logos. Also, fade-up, pitch-ascending fast sonic logos are defined as more exciting and descending-pitch sonic logos as more pleasant. Research limitations/implications The use of sonic logos with no voice does limit its impl...

Multimedia Tools and Applications

In recent years, the rapid development of diverse media has been evident in disparate fields such... more In recent years, the rapid development of diverse media has been evident in disparate fields such as consumer electronics, automotive infotainment and healthcare software. There is a need for innovative methods to assess user perceived Quality of Experience (QoE), as a proxy for consumer satisfaction with such systems and services. Users emotional state plays a key role in QoE; thus, it is necessary to consider it in user experience evaluation and the design process of stereoscopic 3D video content. In the present article we introduce the use of a specially designed model based on a feedforward Multilayer Perception Artificial Neural Network as an appropriate Machine Learning technique for the estimation of human emotional state while viewing various categories of stereoscopic 3D video content. The goal is to design an emotional state estimator based on direct psychophysiological measurements. The considered psychophysiological signals include heart rate (HR) calculated from an echocardiogram (ECG), electro-dermal activity (EDA), and brain activity (BA) in EEG signals. Participants watched a series of 3D video contents varying in terms of visual quality, while the mentioned psychophysiological signals were recorded, and self-reported subjectively experienced emotions using a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) questionnaire. The obtained results show that it is possible to construct such a highly precise estimator of emotional states.

Virtual Reality

This research analyzes the psychological reactions of participants to the neutral, positive, or n... more This research analyzes the psychological reactions of participants to the neutral, positive, or negative attitudes of a virtual audience recorded in 360°-video. Participants were asked to deliver three speeches, each accompanied by a different type of reaction from the virtual audience. Measures of user state included questionnaires, psychophysiological measures, and voice recordings. The results showed that, compared to the neutral audience, the negative audience elicited increases in skin conductance level and heart rate variability, decreases in voice intensity, and a higher ratio of silent parts in the speech, as well as a more negative self-reported valence, higher anxiety, and lower social presence. These findings evidence that, even if some attributes that are considered to be central to immersive experiences are lacking, (i.e., interactivity or avatar representation of the user), 360°-video recreations of virtual environments lead to realistic reactions on users. These results support the effectiveness of 360°-video virtual audiences for public speaking training and social anxiety treatment.

Signal Processing: Image Communication

Abstract Quality of Experience of multimedia content is investigated to understand the overall ac... more Abstract Quality of Experience of multimedia content is investigated to understand the overall acceptability of the content as perceived by the end user. Recent perspectives stress the need to focus not only on perceptual aspects of the content but also on the interaction between perception and cognitive–emotional aspects. Our contribution lies on this direction by presenting a contactless approach to estimate heart rate variability by evaluating face skin color variations in a video sequence. The proposed framework allows to analyze long video sequences depicting a subject and it is robust with respect to small movements and illumination changes. The system is validated on a dataset of 64 sequences where users observe 3D movies selected to induce heart rate variations.

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control

Abstract Online monitoring of electrodermal activity (EDA) may serve as an economical and explici... more Abstract Online monitoring of electrodermal activity (EDA) may serve as an economical and explicit source of information about actual emotional state and engagement level of users during their interaction with information and communications technologies (ICT) applications in real-world situations. In such contexts, however, EDA signal is affected by motion artifacts that introduce noise in the signal and can make it unusable. As the scope of movement minimization during EDA data acquisition is limited, this scenario demands online methods for detection and correction of artifacts with low computational cost. We propose an efficient wavelet-based method for artifacts attenuation while minimizing distortions, using a stationary wavelet transform (SWT) modeling the wavelet coefficients as a Laplace distribution. The proposed method was tested on EDA recordings from publicly available driver dataset collected during real-world driving, and containing a high number of motion artifacts, and the results were compared to those of three state-of-the-art methods for EDA signal filtering. In addition, the proposed method was tested for the online filtering of EDA signals collected while 12 volunteers conducted tasks designed to elicit various stress states. The results evidenced that the prediction of arousal states can be significantly improved after motion artifacts removal, and that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches and it has a lower computational cost. Taken together, these results evidence the effectiveness of the proposed method for online EDA filtering in real world scenarios.

Multimedia Tools and Applications

Various studies show that drowsiness reduces driver alertness and can significantly affect driver... more Various studies show that drowsiness reduces driver alertness and can significantly affect driver performance. In this paper, we investigate the effect of drowsiness on the interaction with the in-vehicle infotainment system (IVIS) while driving. The motivation was to investigate whether a specific type of user interface can provide better performance and lower distraction when the driver is drowsy. The users were asked to navigate a vehicle in a driving simulator and simultaneously perform a set of tasks of varying complexity first when they were rested and alert and then when they were drowsy, after 7 h without sleep. A hierarchical, list-based menu was presented using a stereoscopic head-up display (HUD) and a head-down display (HDD). Based on the results, no general and statistically significant connection was found between drowsiness and driving performance. Surprisingly, the secondary task performance was even better when participants were drowsy, which was evident from the faster task completion times. This could be attributed to extra efforts invested in executing tasks as a result of the participants being aware of their drowsiness. However, when comparing the participants’ performance using HUD and HDD displays, the results showed that using HUD introduces less mental fatigue than using HDD but only in rested and alert condition. No significant difference between the displays was found in the drowsy state.

Journal of Media Psychology

. We report the results of an experiment in which participants ( N = 41) watched a number of tele... more . We report the results of an experiment in which participants ( N = 41) watched a number of television news clips containing either personal or professional stories about celebrities, while measures of information encoding, storage, and retrieval were collected together with psychophysiological measures of autonomous nervous system activity. The results show that the presence of personal information elicits attentional resources allocation and improves memory for contents, suggesting that personal information benefits from a deeper cognitive processing compared with professional information. These findings provide preliminary evidence on the cognitive effects of personal information that encourages further research on several dimensions of media use such as fandom or gossip media from a cognitive point of view.

IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing

Electrodermal activity (EDA) is indicative of psychological processes related to human cognition ... more Electrodermal activity (EDA) is indicative of psychological processes related to human cognition and emotions. Previous research has studied many methods for extracting EDA features; however, their appropriateness for emotion recognition has been tested using a small number of distinct feature sets and on different, usually small, data sets. In the current research, we reviewed 25 studies and implemented 40 different EDA features across time, frequency and time-frequency domains on the publicly available AMIGOS dataset. We performed a systematic comparison of these EDA features using three feature selection methods, Joint Mutual Information (JMI), Conditional Mutual Information Maximization (CMIM) and Double Input Symmetrical Relevance (DISR) and machine learning techniques. We found that approximately the same numbers of features are required to obtain the optimal accuracy for the arousal recognition and the valence recognition. Also, the subject-dependent classification results were significantly higher than the subject-independent classification for both arousal and valence recognition. Statistical features related to the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) were explored for the first time for the emotion recognition from EDA signals and they outperformed all other feature groups, including the most commonly used Skin Conductance Response (SCR) related features.

Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico

Recibido: 12 de diciembre de 2017 / Aceptado: 4 de junio de 2018 Resumen. Este artículo analiza e... more Recibido: 12 de diciembre de 2017 / Aceptado: 4 de junio de 2018 Resumen. Este artículo analiza el estatus del periodismo inmersivo en España mediante el estudio de los contenidos en realidad virtual de los dos medios de comunicación, El País y RTVE. A partir de las aportaciones teóricas existentes, se ha elaborado una matriz de análisis de las principales características de los contenidos periodísticos inmersivos, y se ha aplicado ésta al análisis de un total de 75 piezas publicadas por estos dos medios. Los resultados constatan que la producción actual se basa en el uso de las tecnologías baratas y accesibles a los usuarios, pero con un potencial de interactividad muy limitado, y que el periodismo inmersivo en el ámbito español aún se encuentra en una fase de experimentación formal y de desarrollo de un lenguaje propio. Palabras clave: Periodismo inmersivo; realidad virtual; video 360; RTVE; El País. [en] Immersive journalism in Spain: Analysis of the first generation of virtual reality journalistic contents Abstract. This article analyzes the status of immersive journalism in Spain by studying the contents in virtual reality published by two media: El País and RTVE. Grounding on the available theoretical contributions on the scientific literature in the topic, an analysis framework has been elaborated and applied to the analysis of 75 pieces in virtual reality. The results show that the production relies on technologies highly accessible to the users and with low cost, but with a very limited potential for interactivity. Immersive journalism in Spain is still at a stage of formal experimentation and development of its own language.

2016 3DTV-Conference: The True Vision - Capture, Transmission and Display of 3D Video (3DTV-CON), 2016

Nowadays the Quality of Experience of multimedia content is largely investigated in order to unde... more Nowadays the Quality of Experience of multimedia content is largely investigated in order to understand the overall acceptability of the content as perceived subjectively by the end user. In this paper, a non-invasive technique is adopted for estimating the heart rate of a subject while he is watching 3D contents, as a first step towards the ultimate goal of relating heart rate variations to the quality perceived by the observer in order to provide an effective tool for automatically evaluating the Quality of Experience. In order to validate the proposed approach, subjective tests have been performed and the achieved results are promising thus pushing to further investigate the correlation between emotions and the performed heart rate estimation.

Communications, 2017

This article proposes that syntactic features of newscasts can act as learned motivational stimul... more This article proposes that syntactic features of newscasts can act as learned motivational stimuli determining both viewers’ attention and memory for information. An experiment was conducted in which we manipulated the presence of stings (a type of widely used audiovisual connector) and the arousal levels of stories, while participants’ attention and recall of information were measured. The results suggest that stings elicit motivational activation among viewers; however, differences in motivational activation were observed depending on whether it was due to arousing content or to stings. These results highlight the relevance of accounting for learned motivational processes in media information processing research.

2017 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2017

Execution of cognitive stimulation interventions for cognitive training of individuals in need re... more Execution of cognitive stimulation interventions for cognitive training of individuals in need represents significant burden on caregivers in time and labor costs. Recent advancements in Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) research can be exploited to reduce caregivers burden by work sharing with robots and supplementing/complementing human resources in execution of interventions. Current research evaluates the effectiveness of the SAR empowered cognitive training activity of Bingo Musical among thirty individuals with ID in multi-center trials. A multidimensional evaluation of caregivers workload was conducted; including subjective workload, time spent on users personalized interventions, and qualitative interviews with caregivers. The results of the research confirm a significant reduction in caregivers burden and raise a concern about the need of a specific training of the caregivers to take maximum advantage of SAR in health care.

Comput. Educ., 2021

Virtual Reality (VR) is considered an effective way to boost empathy by adopting the perspective ... more Virtual Reality (VR) is considered an effective way to boost empathy by adopting the perspective of others, thus having clear potential for improving anti-bullying programs. However, this potential benefit of VR is limited by both the lack of adequate content and the lack of empirical evidence of its effectiveness. In this article, we present the process of co-creation of a set of 360°-videos representing the experience of victims of bullying from a first-person perspective, involving secondary school students (N = 89). The impact of bullying content and VR presentation in terms of emotional response was later assessed in an experiment (N = 35) in which we collected both participants’ self-reported and psychophysiological measures of emotional state during the viewing. The results support the effectiveness of VR in producing realistic emotional responses to the acts of bullying, although differences between self-reported and psychophysiological measures were observed. Lessons learne...

Estudios Sobre El Mensaje Periodistico, 2018

espanolEste articulo analiza el estatus del periodismo inmersivo en Espana mediante el estudio de... more espanolEste articulo analiza el estatus del periodismo inmersivo en Espana mediante el estudio de los contenidos en realidad virtual de los dos medios de comunicacion, El Pais y RTVE. A partir de las aportaciones teoricas existentes, se ha elaborado una matriz de analisis de las principales caracteristicas de los contenidos periodisticos inmersivos, y se ha aplicado esta al analisis de un total de 75 piezas publicadas por estos dos medios. Los resultados constatan que la produccion actual se basa en el uso de las tecnologias baratas y accesibles a los usuarios, pero con un potencial de interactividad muy limitado, y que el periodismo inmersivo en el ambito espanol aun se encuentra en una fase de experimentacion formal y de desarrollo de un lenguaje propio. EnglishThis article analyzes the status of immersive journalism in Spain by studying the contents in virtual reality published by two media: El Pais and RTVE. Grounding on the available theoretical contributions on the scientific ...

El analisis de la atencion que prestan los espectadores durante el consumo de contenidos de telev... more El analisis de la atencion que prestan los espectadores durante el consumo de contenidos de television es un aspecto fundamental para comprender los procesos de recepcion de los medios. En esta tesis se realiza una investigacion en torno a este tema que incluye una revision de los diferentes modelos teoricos y metodologias empleados para su estudio, asi como una propuesta teorica sobre los posibles efectos de las respuestas automaticas de atencion en la motivacion del espectador. En relacion con ello, tambien se presenta una investigacion experimental sobre los efectos de la imagen en alta definicion en la atencion y la motivacion de los espectadores, cuyos resultados aportan evidencias preliminares a favor de la propuesta teorica antes mencionada. Finalmente, se realiza una reflexion sobre el desarrollo futuro de esta cuestion tanto en el ambito de la investigacion academica como desde la perspectiva de la industria televisiva y publicitaria.

ABSTRACT En esta comunicación se presentan dos experimentos destinados a evaluar los efectos de l... more ABSTRACT En esta comunicación se presentan dos experimentos destinados a evaluar los efectos de la imagen en alta definición (HD) en los espectadores de televisión. Los resultados del primero de ellos muestran que la HD incrementa la atención visual (medida a través de los niveles de onda alfa cerebral), pero sólo en aquellos contenidos poco motivadores para los espectadores, y en el caso de espectadores suficientemente sensibles a dicha calidad de imagen. Los resultados del segundo experimento, por su parte, sugieren que, aun siendo poco conscientes de la diferencia entre calidades de imagen, los espectadores tienden a visionar más tiempo los canales en HD.

3D Visual Content Creation, Coding and Delivery

Traditionally, the quality of a multimedia system was mainly assessed through the evaluation of i... more Traditionally, the quality of a multimedia system was mainly assessed through the evaluation of its Quality of Service (QoS) that is by evaluating system parameters such as bandwidth, latency, jitter, throughput, transmission delay, availability, etc. However, these metrics often failed to capture the actual end-user perceived quality, which has prompted the development of the construct of Quality of Experience (QoE), widely understood as an interaction of the technical features of multimedia systems with perceptual, and cognitive/emotional factors involved in the interpretation of those features by users. This chapter addresses the open issues in the field of QoS and QoE assessments. First, the perceptual characteristics of the multiview content are analyzed, and then a survey on the existing approaches for QoS and QoE estimation is performed. The analysis is then focused on the subjective aspects of QoE assessment, by describing the standard methodologies currently used and new trends based on human factors research. Finally, the chapter offers a few guidelines for future research directions in the field.

Computers in Human Behavior

Social virtual reality (VR) platforms are an emergent phenomenon, with growing numbers of users u... more Social virtual reality (VR) platforms are an emergent phenomenon, with growing numbers of users utilizing them to connect with others while experiencing feelings of presence (“being there”). This article examines the associations between feelings of presence and the activities performed by users, and the psychological benefits obtained in terms of relatedness, self-expansion, and enjoyment, in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. The results of a survey conducted among users (N = 220) indicate that feelings of spatial presence predict these three outcomes, while social presence predicts relatedness and enjoyment, but not self-expansion. Socialization activities like meeting friends in VR are associated with relatedness and enjoyment, while playful and creative activities allow for self-expansion. Moreover, the perceived impact of social distancing measures was associated with an increase in use, suggesting the utility of these platforms to help users meeting particularly frustrated psychological needs. These results provide a first quantitative account of the potential positive effects of social VR platforms on users’ wellbeing and encourage further research on the topic.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking

Immersive storytelling is widely considered to have a great potential to foster empathy toward su... more Immersive storytelling is widely considered to have a great potential to foster empathy toward suffering people, as well as to provide enjoyable experiences able to attract wider audiences. This article examines how the immersive presentation of 360-video nonfiction contents impacts both empathy toward the characters and enjoyment of the experience and the interplay between these two psychological outcomes. Participants watched a series of 360-video stories presented either on a virtual reality headset or a screen, and measures of spatial presence, empathy (in terms of perspective taking and empathic concern), and enjoyment were collected. Mediation analyses and structural equation models showed a direct positive effect of spatial presence on perspective taking and empathic concern, and an indirect negative effect of immersive presentation on empathic concern through enjoyment. These findings indicate that enjoyment of pleasurable aspects of the experience may hinder the affective dimension of empathy toward the characters, and point out to the need to carefully consider the targeted reactions from the audience, since different intended psychological outcomes may not be fully compatible.

Journal of Product & Brand Management

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine how sonic logo’s acoustic features (intensity, ... more Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine how sonic logo’s acoustic features (intensity, pitch and pace) based on melodic tunes with no voice orient the response of consumers, attract attention, elicit levels of pleasantness and calmness and transmit brand personality traits. Design/methodology/approach A within-subject experimental factorial design is applied to measure emotional arousal (indexed as electrodermal activity) and enhancement on perceptual processing (indexed as heart rate), as well as self-reported factors, namely, calmness/excitement, pleasantness and brand personality scales. Findings Results show a significant increase on electrodermal activity associated with fast-paced sonic logos and a decrease in heart rate in slow-paced long sonic logos. Also, fade-up, pitch-ascending fast sonic logos are defined as more exciting and descending-pitch sonic logos as more pleasant. Research limitations/implications The use of sonic logos with no voice does limit its impl...

Multimedia Tools and Applications

In recent years, the rapid development of diverse media has been evident in disparate fields such... more In recent years, the rapid development of diverse media has been evident in disparate fields such as consumer electronics, automotive infotainment and healthcare software. There is a need for innovative methods to assess user perceived Quality of Experience (QoE), as a proxy for consumer satisfaction with such systems and services. Users emotional state plays a key role in QoE; thus, it is necessary to consider it in user experience evaluation and the design process of stereoscopic 3D video content. In the present article we introduce the use of a specially designed model based on a feedforward Multilayer Perception Artificial Neural Network as an appropriate Machine Learning technique for the estimation of human emotional state while viewing various categories of stereoscopic 3D video content. The goal is to design an emotional state estimator based on direct psychophysiological measurements. The considered psychophysiological signals include heart rate (HR) calculated from an echocardiogram (ECG), electro-dermal activity (EDA), and brain activity (BA) in EEG signals. Participants watched a series of 3D video contents varying in terms of visual quality, while the mentioned psychophysiological signals were recorded, and self-reported subjectively experienced emotions using a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) questionnaire. The obtained results show that it is possible to construct such a highly precise estimator of emotional states.

Virtual Reality

This research analyzes the psychological reactions of participants to the neutral, positive, or n... more This research analyzes the psychological reactions of participants to the neutral, positive, or negative attitudes of a virtual audience recorded in 360°-video. Participants were asked to deliver three speeches, each accompanied by a different type of reaction from the virtual audience. Measures of user state included questionnaires, psychophysiological measures, and voice recordings. The results showed that, compared to the neutral audience, the negative audience elicited increases in skin conductance level and heart rate variability, decreases in voice intensity, and a higher ratio of silent parts in the speech, as well as a more negative self-reported valence, higher anxiety, and lower social presence. These findings evidence that, even if some attributes that are considered to be central to immersive experiences are lacking, (i.e., interactivity or avatar representation of the user), 360°-video recreations of virtual environments lead to realistic reactions on users. These results support the effectiveness of 360°-video virtual audiences for public speaking training and social anxiety treatment.

Signal Processing: Image Communication

Abstract Quality of Experience of multimedia content is investigated to understand the overall ac... more Abstract Quality of Experience of multimedia content is investigated to understand the overall acceptability of the content as perceived by the end user. Recent perspectives stress the need to focus not only on perceptual aspects of the content but also on the interaction between perception and cognitive–emotional aspects. Our contribution lies on this direction by presenting a contactless approach to estimate heart rate variability by evaluating face skin color variations in a video sequence. The proposed framework allows to analyze long video sequences depicting a subject and it is robust with respect to small movements and illumination changes. The system is validated on a dataset of 64 sequences where users observe 3D movies selected to induce heart rate variations.

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control

Abstract Online monitoring of electrodermal activity (EDA) may serve as an economical and explici... more Abstract Online monitoring of electrodermal activity (EDA) may serve as an economical and explicit source of information about actual emotional state and engagement level of users during their interaction with information and communications technologies (ICT) applications in real-world situations. In such contexts, however, EDA signal is affected by motion artifacts that introduce noise in the signal and can make it unusable. As the scope of movement minimization during EDA data acquisition is limited, this scenario demands online methods for detection and correction of artifacts with low computational cost. We propose an efficient wavelet-based method for artifacts attenuation while minimizing distortions, using a stationary wavelet transform (SWT) modeling the wavelet coefficients as a Laplace distribution. The proposed method was tested on EDA recordings from publicly available driver dataset collected during real-world driving, and containing a high number of motion artifacts, and the results were compared to those of three state-of-the-art methods for EDA signal filtering. In addition, the proposed method was tested for the online filtering of EDA signals collected while 12 volunteers conducted tasks designed to elicit various stress states. The results evidenced that the prediction of arousal states can be significantly improved after motion artifacts removal, and that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches and it has a lower computational cost. Taken together, these results evidence the effectiveness of the proposed method for online EDA filtering in real world scenarios.

Multimedia Tools and Applications

Various studies show that drowsiness reduces driver alertness and can significantly affect driver... more Various studies show that drowsiness reduces driver alertness and can significantly affect driver performance. In this paper, we investigate the effect of drowsiness on the interaction with the in-vehicle infotainment system (IVIS) while driving. The motivation was to investigate whether a specific type of user interface can provide better performance and lower distraction when the driver is drowsy. The users were asked to navigate a vehicle in a driving simulator and simultaneously perform a set of tasks of varying complexity first when they were rested and alert and then when they were drowsy, after 7 h without sleep. A hierarchical, list-based menu was presented using a stereoscopic head-up display (HUD) and a head-down display (HDD). Based on the results, no general and statistically significant connection was found between drowsiness and driving performance. Surprisingly, the secondary task performance was even better when participants were drowsy, which was evident from the faster task completion times. This could be attributed to extra efforts invested in executing tasks as a result of the participants being aware of their drowsiness. However, when comparing the participants’ performance using HUD and HDD displays, the results showed that using HUD introduces less mental fatigue than using HDD but only in rested and alert condition. No significant difference between the displays was found in the drowsy state.

Journal of Media Psychology

. We report the results of an experiment in which participants ( N = 41) watched a number of tele... more . We report the results of an experiment in which participants ( N = 41) watched a number of television news clips containing either personal or professional stories about celebrities, while measures of information encoding, storage, and retrieval were collected together with psychophysiological measures of autonomous nervous system activity. The results show that the presence of personal information elicits attentional resources allocation and improves memory for contents, suggesting that personal information benefits from a deeper cognitive processing compared with professional information. These findings provide preliminary evidence on the cognitive effects of personal information that encourages further research on several dimensions of media use such as fandom or gossip media from a cognitive point of view.

IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing

Electrodermal activity (EDA) is indicative of psychological processes related to human cognition ... more Electrodermal activity (EDA) is indicative of psychological processes related to human cognition and emotions. Previous research has studied many methods for extracting EDA features; however, their appropriateness for emotion recognition has been tested using a small number of distinct feature sets and on different, usually small, data sets. In the current research, we reviewed 25 studies and implemented 40 different EDA features across time, frequency and time-frequency domains on the publicly available AMIGOS dataset. We performed a systematic comparison of these EDA features using three feature selection methods, Joint Mutual Information (JMI), Conditional Mutual Information Maximization (CMIM) and Double Input Symmetrical Relevance (DISR) and machine learning techniques. We found that approximately the same numbers of features are required to obtain the optimal accuracy for the arousal recognition and the valence recognition. Also, the subject-dependent classification results were significantly higher than the subject-independent classification for both arousal and valence recognition. Statistical features related to the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) were explored for the first time for the emotion recognition from EDA signals and they outperformed all other feature groups, including the most commonly used Skin Conductance Response (SCR) related features.

Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico

Recibido: 12 de diciembre de 2017 / Aceptado: 4 de junio de 2018 Resumen. Este artículo analiza e... more Recibido: 12 de diciembre de 2017 / Aceptado: 4 de junio de 2018 Resumen. Este artículo analiza el estatus del periodismo inmersivo en España mediante el estudio de los contenidos en realidad virtual de los dos medios de comunicación, El País y RTVE. A partir de las aportaciones teóricas existentes, se ha elaborado una matriz de análisis de las principales características de los contenidos periodísticos inmersivos, y se ha aplicado ésta al análisis de un total de 75 piezas publicadas por estos dos medios. Los resultados constatan que la producción actual se basa en el uso de las tecnologías baratas y accesibles a los usuarios, pero con un potencial de interactividad muy limitado, y que el periodismo inmersivo en el ámbito español aún se encuentra en una fase de experimentación formal y de desarrollo de un lenguaje propio. Palabras clave: Periodismo inmersivo; realidad virtual; video 360; RTVE; El País. [en] Immersive journalism in Spain: Analysis of the first generation of virtual reality journalistic contents Abstract. This article analyzes the status of immersive journalism in Spain by studying the contents in virtual reality published by two media: El País and RTVE. Grounding on the available theoretical contributions on the scientific literature in the topic, an analysis framework has been elaborated and applied to the analysis of 75 pieces in virtual reality. The results show that the production relies on technologies highly accessible to the users and with low cost, but with a very limited potential for interactivity. Immersive journalism in Spain is still at a stage of formal experimentation and development of its own language.

2016 3DTV-Conference: The True Vision - Capture, Transmission and Display of 3D Video (3DTV-CON), 2016

Nowadays the Quality of Experience of multimedia content is largely investigated in order to unde... more Nowadays the Quality of Experience of multimedia content is largely investigated in order to understand the overall acceptability of the content as perceived subjectively by the end user. In this paper, a non-invasive technique is adopted for estimating the heart rate of a subject while he is watching 3D contents, as a first step towards the ultimate goal of relating heart rate variations to the quality perceived by the observer in order to provide an effective tool for automatically evaluating the Quality of Experience. In order to validate the proposed approach, subjective tests have been performed and the achieved results are promising thus pushing to further investigate the correlation between emotions and the performed heart rate estimation.