Another semester–and another school year– has begun and I realize that I haven’t even had time to blog about the fantastic time I (once again) had with the Intensive Freshman Seminar (IFS) program. This program is one of the ways that Indiana University helps make a HUGE university smaller for the class of incoming freshmen. This is the fifth year that I’ve taught a course called This is Your Brain on Media, where I try to introduce students to the concepts of social science generally, cognitive science specifically, and give them a chance to think about media in a way they probably never have–as a complex psychological stimuli that requires your brain to process it.
Of course, during the 3 weeks we also spend plenty of time visiting some of the cool places IU has to offer–like the Wells Library and the Lilly Library. And, lectures. Of course.
My IFS intern Alex gives a lecture on Media Violence
A student captures a digital copy of the ORIGINAL Vesalius @ The Lilly Library
Jeff listens to our tour guide of the Wells Library, while Dr. Wells' bust overlooks the scene
But, of course, the main thing that I get pumped about in IFS is that the students actually do SCIENCE and do it quite quickly. I mean, at the end of the first week the “Attention Group” is in the ICR collecting heart rate data to address an original hypothesis of their own.
Differences in Cardiac Orienting Responses to Complete Color Change versus Partial Color Change
The students in the attention group got together and brainstormed about different things they felt to affect the amount of attention that people paid to media messages. In class we discuss the difference between automatic attention and controlled attention. The later happens over a comparatively long time–kinda like what you think of when you hear the phrase “Pay attention to this lecture!” The former, automatic attention, is a relatively quick attention response–also known as the orienting response–that often occurs following change in the environment.
The attention students–Jeff, Payton, Olivia, Conor, Sam, and Matt–initially focused on changes from Black & White to color in films, similar to to the famous one when Dorothy opens to door of her black & white house to reveal the technicolor Oz. Then they recalled a common production technique of only have portions of the screen be colorized. Like the “Girl in the Red Coat” scenes from Schindler’s List.
The hypothesis was that there would be more automatic attention allocated to the change in full-color scenes compared to the change to what the students called “spot color” scenes. The indication of this difference would be shown in the deceleration of heart rate at the point of the color changes. It is widely known that heart rate deceleration is an indication of the orienting response.
And so, they collected their data…cleaned and edited it…and found a pretty interesting result.
Olivia and Conor apply electrodes to Andrew to measure his HR
Sam considers how to edit Inter-beat Interval Cardiac Data
Below is a graph showing their Cardiac Response Curves, with data from 3 film clips making up the result in each condition.
Greater HR deceleration for Full Color clips (Blue Line) compared to Spot Color (Red Line)
Here is their presentation:
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