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The emotional experience of films: does Audio Description make a difference?
Abstract
Experiencing emotion is one of the main reasons why we watch movies, go to the theatre or expose ourselves to different audiovisual manifestations. Audio Description attempts to provide the visually impaired with an experience similar to that offered by audiovisual formats such as cinema, dance or theatre. This paper focuses on Audio Description of films, with the aim of discovering whether there are differences between the emotional experience of films as whole audiovisual texts, films without the visual component (only music, sounds and dialogue) and films with Audio Description. We designed a study to measure the emotional experience in sighted and in visually impaired audiences. More specifically, we worked with three basic emotions (disgust, fear and sadness) and 15 film scenes that had been previously validated as effective stimuli in the psychological literature. Employing a Likert questionnaire (PANASX) and heart rate measurement, we compared the emotional impact of these scenes in three different versions (normal films, films without images and films with Audio Description) for 70 sighted and visually impaired subjects. Results showed statistically significant differences between the three stated versions for disgust and fear, but not for sadness.
... In terms of commercial success, films that incorporate popular music have an average of 15% higher box office revenue [9]. For instance, the "Twilight Sage" saw its soundtracks topping the Billboard charts, with the first soundtrack selling over 2.5 million copies in the US alone [10]. In the social aspect, films shape the identity of the youth. ...
... This, in some way, not only increases the number of films that present cultures other than the dominant one but also familiarizes youth with a more diverse choice of music. For example, if the organization wants to include indie rock or global music, it will be easier to connect because of the different cultural backgrounds [10]. This shift can be useful in breaking the monotonous pattern of youth culture that mostly attracts Western pop music so as to make films more culturally diverse. ...
... Educational facilities and mass media classes may discuss how music affects viewers' moods and the plot of the movies. In this way, growing critical thinking skills enable the young generation to act as responsible consumers of the media to appreciate the artistic aspect of the media and how it impacts society [10]. ...
This research delves into the profound impact of pop music on youth-oriented films of the 2000s, examining aspects such as cultural representation, emotional connection, and financial gains. The introduction underscores the critical importance of this topic in understanding how media shapes youth culture and influences societal perceptions. By focusing on iconic films like "High School Musical" and "Mean Girls," the study illustrates how pop music is used to enrich narratives and captivate audiences, making it an integral part of the storytelling process. The analysis reveals several key issues, including cultural homogenization, the reinforcement of stereotypes, and the prioritization of commercialization over artistic integrity. These challenges highlight the need for a more thoughtful integration of music in films to avoid superficial portrayals and promote authenticity. To address these issues, the research recommends expanding the range of musical themes to reflect diverse cultures and experiences, breaking away from stereotypes to foster more nuanced character portrayals, and balancing commercial objectives with creative expression in future film productions. The conclusion emphasizes the significance of this research in guiding media practices toward greater cultural diversity in youth-oriented entertainment. By adopting these recommendations, filmmakers can create richer, more diverse content that resonates emotionally with audiences while also contributing positively to the cultural landscape.
... For illustration, Table 1 presents a summary of the literature review, with an emphasis on the measures applied in each article, the purpose of its application, and additional methods. (2017) Pre-stimuli and poststimuli self-report questionnaires Heart rate Measure the emotional elicitation to audio described audiovisual stimuli Ramos (2015Ramos ( , 2016 Post-stimuli questionnaires ...
... Given that electrodermal activity devices are less intrusive than other methods, they may have the potential to be applied in contexts where ecological validity is difficult to achieve in laboratory conditions, for instance in the scenic arts. Like electrodermal activity measures, heart rate activity is monitored to assess the physiological elicitation of emotions as users are exposed to different audio described (Ramos 2015(Ramos , 2016Rojo, Ramos and López 2021) or audio subtitled (Iturregui-Gallardo and Matamala 2021) stimuli. EEG is a less explored measure in MA which allows for analysing variations in cognitive load and immersion through signals in task-relevant brain regions (Kruger, Doherty and Ibrahim 2017;Orero et al. 2018). ...
... As for the emerging research on heart rate and electrodermal activity measures, studies employing these methods can also be framed within the mixed methods approach. Ramos's (2015Ramos's ( , 2016 experiments test emotional response to audio narrations vs. ADs via heart rate and post-stimuli questionnaires, and the author's rationale for mixing methods is to compare results and overcome the shortcomings of self-reported measures. In Iturregui-Gallardo and Matamala (2021), electrodermal activity measures are combined with heart rate and poststimuli questionnaires in order to assess emotional reactions to audio subtitles with voice-over vs. dubbing effect. ...
Mixed methods have an established trajectory in the social sciences. Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility (MA) Studies are also increasingly applying the “third research paradigm” ( Johnson et al., 2007 , 112). Yet, publications in our field often fail to discuss the mixed-method nature of the study in depth, be it because of space limitations or a lack of deliberate integration of the methods. Concurrently, MA has seen a boom in experimental research, as descriptive approaches have given way to reception and user-centred studies that engage in the cognitive processes and immersion of audiences ( Orero et al. 2018 ). This article proposes a methodological basis for MA researchers to design studies employing physiological instruments within a mixed methods framework. The core mixed methods designs (convergent, explanatory, and exploratory) are presented, and examples of their applications to research employing physiological instruments are discussed.
... The psychophysiological impact of audio described porn 105 Research on audio description (AD) has undergone an enormous development in the last decade. Unfortunately, little attention has been devoted to the social, psychological and emotional factors influencing AD, one exception being the recent line of research which empirically explores the emotional reception of AD (Ramos & Rojo, 2014;Ramos, 2015Ramos, , 2016 and the influence of psychological factors in its production phase (Ramos & Rojo, 2020). Results from these studies satisfactorily prove that audio described films are capable of evoking a similar emotional response to that elicited by their audiovisual counterparts, especially for scenes inducing disgust and fear, and that reception and production depend largely on film typology. ...
... Unfortunately, less attention has been devoted to the social, psychological and emotional factors influencing AD, one exception being the recent line of research that empirically explores the emotional reception of AD (Ramos & Rojo, 2014;Ramos, 2015Ramos, , 2016 and the influence of psychological factors-e.g., creativity-in its production phase (Ramos & Rojo, 2020). Results from these studies satisfactorily prove that audio described films are capable of evoking a similar emotional response to that elicited by their audiovisual counterparts, especially for scenes inducing disgust and fear. ...
... But it is still necessary to deepen our understanding of the emotional and cognitive processes involved in the reception of different types of audio described texts. With that aim, the present study continues the work previously conducted on negative emotions (Ramos, 2015(Ramos, , 2016 and focuses on the AD of porn movies. Our aim is to explore whether the audio described version of scenes with explicit sexual content is capable of offering a similar experience to that provided by their audiovisual counterpart. ...
Research on audio description (AD) has undergone an enormous development in the last decade. Unfortunately, little attention has been devoted to the social, psychological and emotional factors influencing AD, one exception being the recent line of research which empirically explores the emotional reception of AD (Ramos & Rojo, 2014; Ramos, 2015, 2016) and the influence of psychological factors in its production phase (Ramos & Rojo, 2020). Results from these studies satisfactorily prove that audio described films are capable of evoking a similar emotional response to that elicited by their audiovisual counterparts, especially for scenes inducing disgust and fear, and that reception and production depend largely on film typology. The purpose of this new study is to analyse whether the audio described version of porn scenes can also offer its audience a similar experience to that provided by the original audiovisual scenes. Forty-seven sighted and visually impaired women (mean age = 25.12) took part in the experiment. The sample was divided into two groups: 25 sighted women watched the original audiovisual version of the clips, whereas 22 visually impaired women listened to the audio described version. Participants’ emotional response was analysed by a combination of an indicator of autonomic activation (heart rate, HR,) and self-report measures. Our results indicate that audio described porn films are capable of eliciting a similar response in both blind and sighted audiences to the one evoked by original audiovisual scenes.
... First, HR and EDA (or galvanic skin response) were used by Fryer (2013) in combination with questionnaires on presence to test the immersion and the Elicited Emotion Scale developed by Gross and Levenson (1995) of audio described films with no AD, synthetic AD, and human AD. Later, HR was used by Ramos (2015) in combination with the PANAS-X questionnaire (Watson & Clark, 1999) to test the emotional activation experience by participants when exposed to audio described or non-audio described emotional clips. In Fryer (2013), 19 blind and partially sighted participants (M=48.53) ...
... Traditional reception studies methods, such as self-report instruments based on scale rating, are combined, as in this case, with physiological measures, deemed more objective. In the field of MA, the application of such methods is still developing and has only been used in a handful of studies (Fryer, 2013;Ramos, 2015). The versatility of this type of measuring tools allows for their application to different fields and with different types of stimuli. ...
... The results obtained from psychophysiological measures did not provide as clear conclusions as in the self-report. In fact, in studies on media services for the blind and partially sighted (Fryer, 2013;Ramos, 2015), psychophysiological measures did not report solid outcome either. The measurement of physiological markers is far from simple since it is difficult to distinguish which factors had an impact on the recordings. ...
Audio subtitling (AST) is a media accessibility service that allows for people who are blind, partially sighted or with any reading disability to access written subtitles in their aural form. Despite the existing literature on other media accessibility services such as audio description, the way written subtitles compare to orally delivered subtitles has not been researched. In this study, a group of 42 blind and partially sighted participants and a group of 42 sighted participants watched the same three video clips. Two of them pictured two emotions (sadness and fear) and the third was emotionally neutral. The clips were prepared with subtitles or audio subtitles, according to the target participants. The emotional effect of the clips was measured in two ways: with self-reports, by completing after each clip the SAM questionnaire (Bradley & Lang, 1994); and with psychophysiological measures: electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR), that were recorded while participants watched each clip. The analyses of the data obtained in both experiments indicate that self-report measures revealed similar experiences for both blind and sighted participants, differentiating between valence (negative for fear and sadness, but not for neutral) and arousal (deemed higher for fear than for sadness and neutral). Data from EDA and HR measures are less conclusive.
... More recently, the importance of the psychological factors that may influence the creation and reception of AD has been highlighted by a number of studies focused on emotions (Ramos and Rojo, 2014;Ramos, 2015Ramos, , 2016 and their link to other phenomena highly related to fictional emotions, such as immersion (Wilken and Kruger, 2016;Walczak, 2017) and presence (Fryer and Freeman, 2013;Fryer and Jonathan, 2014;Walczak and Fryer, 2018). Studies on emotion in AD are particularly relevant for the present study given the close connection between emotional and sexual reactions. ...
... Of all physiological measures, HRV was the only measure to show a significant response. Ramos (2015Ramos ( , 2016 also explored AD emotional reception by means of questionnaires and by measuring HR in visually impaired and sighted participants. Her studies compared the emotional power of audiovisual texts with and without AD for the emotions of fear, sadness and disgust, and assessed the efficacy of different AD styles: a more descriptive and neutral AD vs. a more subjective and narrative one. ...
... Existing work points to the efficacy of AD to guarantee immersion and emotional engagement (e.g., Fryer, 2013;Fryer and Freeman, 2013;Ramos, 2015Ramos, , 2016. But evidence is still scarce, and more research is needed to explore its reception with different types of stimuli. ...
Audio description remains the cornerstone of accessibility for visually impaired audiences to all sorts of audiovisual content, including porn. Existing work points to the efficacy of audio description to guarantee immersion and emotional engagement, but evidence on its role in sexual arousal and engagement in porn is still scant. The present study takes on this challenge by comparing sighted and visually impaired participants’ experiences with porn in terms of their physiological response [i.e., cortisol and heart rate (HR)] and self-report measures of affect [Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS); Watson et al., 1988], anxiety [State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI); Spielberger et al., 1970], sexual reactivity and arousal [Sexual Inhibition/Sexual Excitation Scale (SIS/SES); Moyano and Sierra (2014); and the Ratings of Sexual Arousal (RSA); Mosher (2011)], and narrative engagement or transportation [The Transport Narrative Questionnaire, Green and Brock (2013)]. 69 Spanish participants were allocated into three different groups: 25 sighted participants who watched and heard the porn scenes in their audio-visual version (AV); 22 sighted participants who listened to the audio described version without images (AD); and 22 visually impaired participants who also listened to the audio described version without images (ONCE). Overall, results on physiological and self-report measures revealed no significant differences between groups or different versions of the clips. The analysis of cortisol reactivity to porn as the maximum increase or decrease in cortisol (t+12) with respect to baseline values (t−20) revealed no significant differences between the groups, but pointed to a higher percentage of non-responders than responders in the three groups, the highest being found in the ONCE group. As for participants’ cardiac response to the clips, no significant differences were found across the groups, with the highest HR levels being registered in the baseline phase. Self-report measures revealed significant between-group differences in negative affect. The ONCE group displayed the highest pre-task levels of negative affect and was the only group that showed a decrease in negative affect after exposure to the clips. Sighted and visually impaired participants reported to be moderately aroused and immersed in the films, regardless of exposure to AV or AD porn. In addition, correlations found between participants’ levels of self-report sexual arousal and transportation and post-task affect pointed to a positive relationship between exposure to porn and perceived levels of sexual arousal and affect. Results from the study reflected the efficacy of audio description in providing sighted and visually impaired audiences with a similar experience to that offered by original AV porn scenes. This study is exploratory but provides valid, initial groundwork for further research on the impact of audio description on porn reception.
... Emotional description is a more narrative version, sometimes named audio narration (AN). Emotional AN is creative and subjective with the aim of enabling BPS audiences' access to the emotional experience offered by cinema to sighted viewers (Ramos, 2015). In her recent research, Ramos uses heart rate measurement to compare an objective AD with an emotive AN (Caro, 2016;Ramos, 2015). ...
... Emotional AN is creative and subjective with the aim of enabling BPS audiences' access to the emotional experience offered by cinema to sighted viewers (Ramos, 2015). In her recent research, Ramos uses heart rate measurement to compare an objective AD with an emotive AN (Caro, 2016;Ramos, 2015). Her results show that not only is the BPS audience's emotional reaction much stronger while listening to emotive AN, but that audiences also accept and enjoy subjective AN (Ramos, 2015). ...
... In her recent research, Ramos uses heart rate measurement to compare an objective AD with an emotive AN (Caro, 2016;Ramos, 2015). Her results show that not only is the BPS audience's emotional reaction much stronger while listening to emotive AN, but that audiences also accept and enjoy subjective AN (Ramos, 2015). ...
This paper presents the results of a study that evaluates audio description (AD) and visitor experience with a group of blind and partially sighted (BPS) visitors to a real-world visitor attraction—Titanic Belfast. We apply the 10-facet model of visitor experience of Packer and Ballantyne (2016) for the first time in the context of accessibility, and through this we highlight accessibility issues which arose during the study. We identify two categories in our qualitative analysis that the model (Packer & Ballantyne, 2016) cannot cover. We also model the factors that influence visitor experience and apply them to the later approach of Packer, Ballantyne, & Bond’s (2018) Dimensions of Visitor Experience (DoVE) Adjective Checklist. The checklist is based on their previous 10-facet model, and translated and refined into 15 dimensions. Although the DoVE checklist is not specifically designed for the context of accessibility, we found that it is sufficiently comprehensive to model accessibility aspects of the museum AD and visitor experience for BPS visitors.
... For example, Fryer (2013) studied AD-induced presence based on self-report data and heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) measurements of visually impaired participants. Ramos (2015) looked into emotional activation (based on heart rate measures and questionnaires) in participants with sight loss using audio described clips portraying fear, sadness and disgust and found the highest levels of emotional activation in the case of fear-inducing scenes. Similarly, Iturregui-Gallardo (2019) researched emotional activation in visually impaired respondents based on self-reports, HR and EDA induced by different audio subtitling (AST) styles. ...
... Save for the clip portraying fear, he found no statistically significant differences when it comes to the effects of the two voicing styles on the emotional activation of respondents. What is more, he found no correlation between psychophysiological and self-report data, an observation also made by Fryer (2013) and Ramos (2015), which can be viewed as a limitation of such studies. The researchers also point out that such experiments are difficult to control, as there may be other factors influencing the physiology of participants, such as room temperature, stress levels or bodily functions such as digestion. ...
The chapter discusses audio description (AD) which is an audiovisual translation method whereby images are translated into words. AD is primarily created with blind and visually impaired persons in mind, though it can also benefit people with no sight loss. The chapter starts with the definition of AD and its typologies, as well as with the discussion of its primary and secondary target audiences. This is followed by presentation of the main AD types: screen AD, (semi-)live AD and museum AD. Next, a short historical overview is offered, followed by the theoretical foundations and research which includes text-based, reception and experimental studies. The chapter ends with some didactic implications and an attempt to predict some future trends including those related to the Universal Design (UD) paradigm and the idea of an inclusive society.
... This is a service that allows for people with visual or reading impairments to access written subtitles in their aural form. Fryer (2013), Ramos (2015) and Ramos Caro (2016) explored the audio description (AD) of different delivery types: human, synthetic, objective and subjective. Each of these studies employed HR and SCR alongside self-reports to examine reactions to combinations of fear, sadness or disgust, and neutral emotions. ...
In this article, we test the findings by Leveridge and colleagues (2024) regarding the reception of aesthetically integrated subtitles (AIS), and most critically, we explore the role of gender in these outcomes. We explore psychophysiological (skin conductance and heart rate) and self-report responses (questionnaires) among three different subtitle deliveries (no subtitles, standard subtitles, and aesthetically integrated), and between male and female participants in a series of clips from the Russian thriller-horror film Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2004). This research involves an entire array of film clips, including AIS from Night Watch. We use null-hypothesis-significance-testing (NHST) and Bayesian analyses to explore the claim that AIS enhance psychophysiological arousal and viewing experience quality compared to standard subtitles (STS) and investigate the gender characteristics and differences in the reported outcomes. We provide a replication of previous findings. Critically, we show that female participants exhibited higher arousal for AIS, also separately for all subtitle types, which was not reflected in significant between-gender differences for self-reports for intensity and arousal. In another novel section of this research, we pierre-alexis.mevel@nottingham.ac.uk, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3503-5302
... This is a service that allows for people with visual or reading impairments to access written subtitles in their aural form. Fryer (2013), Ramos (2015) and Ramos Caro (2016) explored the audio description (AD) of different delivery types: human, synthetic, objective and subjective. Each of these studies employed HR and SCR alongside self-reports to examine reactions to combinations of fear, sadness or disgust, and neutral emotions. ...
In this article, we test the findings by Leveridge and colleagues (2024) regarding the reception of aesthetically integrated subtitles (AIS), and most critically, we explore the role of gender in these outcomes. We explore psychophysiological (skin conductance and heart rate) and self-report responses (questionnaires) among three different subtitle deliveries (no subtitles, standard subtitles, and aesthetically integrated), and between male and female participants in a series of clips from the Russian thriller-horror film Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2004). This research involves an entire array of film clips, including AIS from Night Watch. We use null-hypothesis-significance-testing (NHST) and Bayesian analyses to explore the claim that AIS enhance psychophysiological arousal and viewing experience quality compared to standard subtitles (STS) and investigate the gender characteristics and differences in the reported outcomes. We provide a replication of previous findings. Critically, we show that female participants exhibited higher arousal for AIS, also separately for all subtitle types, which was not reflected in significant between-gender differences for self-reports for intensity and arousal. In another novel section of this research, we show that AIS increased interest in film genres for both genders, suggesting their significant potential for future audiovisual translation practices. Lay summary In this article, we look at how different types of film subtitles affect viewers, focusing on whether gender plays a role in these effects. We tested three types of subtitles: no subtitles, regular subtitles displayed in white letters at the bottom of the screen, and a special type called aesthetically integrated subtitles (AIS), which are designed to blend more seamlessly with the movie through the use of visual effects, colour, or font. Using clips from the Russian thriller-horror film Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2006), we measured people's physical responses, like heart rate and skin conductance, as well as their feelings about the experience through the use of questionnaires.Our findings build on previous research and show that AIS can enhance the viewing experience. Interestingly, we found that women showed higher physical arousal (like increased heart rate) when watching movies with subtitles, especially AIS, but this did not translate into significant differences in how intense or engaging they said the clips felt compared to men. We also discovered that AIS made both men and women more interested in different film genres, suggesting that these subtitles could be useful in future audiovisual translations and productions.
... Subsequent studies explored AD features' impact on presence, such as writing styles ) and human vs. synthetic voice (Fryer 2013). Ramos Caro (2015Caro ( , 2016 used heart rate to compare emotional impact with and without AD and its language. Ramos incorporated heart rate to assess emotional elicitation in audio-described content viewers. ...
This paper presents a conceptual replication of Kruger et al.’s (2017a) study, investigating the utility of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) indicators as objective measurements of psychological immersion in subtitled audiovisual products. The study employed a quasi-experimental design in ten participants viewing video clips with and without subtitles, while their physiological responses were monitored. Results suggest lower arousal levels in both conditions compared to baseline, with statistically significant differences observed in mean HR, mean RR, and RMSSD for the subtitles condition. While most inferential tests did not yield significant outcomes, descriptive trends indicate decreased arousal relative to the baseline. They also show increased arousal throughout the clip for most indicators and opposing trends for Mean HR, RMSSD and LF/HF between the two conditions. Methodological suggestions include using multiple data points for HR and HRV analysis, exploring ultra short-term measurements, selecting self-contained clips for viewing, and considering post-task baselines for a more accurate resting state representation. Despite limitations due to the small sample size, this study underscores the potential of HR and HRV as measures of immersion in translated audiovisual products, emphasising the need for larger sample sizes in future research to enhance statistical power and generalizability.
... In the field of education, relevant research topics include EFL learning (Rodríguez & Frumuselu, 2023), foreign language learning, second language acquisition, bilingual education(Enríquez Aranda & Mendoza García, 2023), teacher training(Arancon, 2023), primary education (Costales, 2021) etc. Additionally, AVT research delves into cognitive and psychological aspects, addressing topics such as cognitive load theory (Szarkowska & Gerber-Morón, 2019), musical emotions (Ramos, 2015). Applied studies related to AVT aim to provide societal assistance, with research in Medical and Health-related Topics covering areas like medical terms (Lozano & Matamala, 2009), blind and visually impaired (Rizzo & Spinzi, 2023)，hard of hearing (Sánchez, 2022). ...
This study employs a bibliometric analysis to assess trends in Audiovisual Translation (AVT) research from 2004 to 2023 using the Web of Science Core Collection as resources. The analysis targets identifying key researchers, influential institutions, principal research topics, and current and emerging hotspots in AVT. This study utilized CiteSpace for visualization, revealing a steady increase in AVT publications with a significant peak in 2019. Key researchers such as Jorge Diaz-Cintas and Frederic Chaume Varela emerged as influential figures, with a robust citation network underscoring their impact. Prominent institutions include the University of London and Autonomous University of Barcelona, indicating pivotal roles in AVT research. The analysis also identifies current hotspots like audio description and subtitles, with emerging trends in educational applications and cognitive aspects of AVT. The findings also point towards a dynamic expansion in AVT, emphasizing its interdisciplinary nature and the growing importance of technological integration in translation studies.
... Fryer (2013) used SCR and HR in combination with questionnaires to study viewer immersion and the elicitation of amusement, fear and sadness in clips with no AD and those featuring AD delivered by synthetic and human voices. Two later studies by Ramos (2015) and Ramos Caro (2016) using the same methods focussed on responses to the emotions of disgust, sadness and fear in clips with and without AD as well as clips using "objective" and "subjective" AD, the latter being a more intensely "descriptive" form including metaphors, inferences and subjective evaluations of the content being described. The self-reported measures in all three studies presented differentiations in response to each emotion elicited, and significant differences where the clips showing fear were concerned, concretizing the value of this emotion for experimental research and foreshadowing its potential to generate meaningful results in the present experiment. ...
Situated at the intersection of Psychology, Film studies, Accessibility Studies and Translation Studies, this article investigates the emotional correlates of two types of subtitles (standard and aesthetically integrated) on audiences in the context of fear-eliciting clips with Russian fantasy thriller Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2004). Our experiment employed a methodology combining electrodermal activity (EDA), heart-rate responses (HR) and self-reports (questionnaires) to account for the complex interplay between experiential, cognitive, behavioural and physiological elements that make up emotional responses. We examined the psychophysiological and self-report responses to two subtitling delivery effects – standard subtitles and aesthetically integrated subtitles – focussing specifically on fear. We used significance-testing and Bayesian analyses to compare the two subtitling deliveries. For both analyses, we found that the presentation of aesthetically integrated subtitles led to higher positively rated psychophysiological arousal and quality of viewing experience ratings compared to standard subtitles. This novel finding suggests that aesthetically integrated subtitles could be the future of audiovisual translation. Lay Summary This study explored how different types of subtitles affect how our viewing experience and how we feel while watching films. The researchers showed clips one might consider emotionally arousing/scary from a Russian film (Night Watch, a 2004 film by Timur Bekmambetov) in three different ways: no subtitles, regular subtitles displayed at the bottom of the screen, and artistic subtitles that blended in with the film’s visual language and story. In our article, we call these subtitles ‘aesthetically integrated subtitles’. The researchers measured how people reacted physically (sweat glands activity, faster heart rate) and asked - using questionnaires - the participants about their viewing experience and how emotionally aroused/scared they felt. Interestingly, the participants who watched the clips with the aesthetically integrated subtitles responded with higher positively rated physiological arousal and also reported that the experience was more emotionally arousing/scary and enjoyable. This suggests that aesthetically integrated subtitles could provide a new way to translate or create films that are more accessible and emotionally engaging for viewers.
... Fryer (2013) used SCR and HR in combination with questionnaires to study viewer immersion and the elicitation of amusement, fear and sadness in clips with no AD and those featuring AD delivered by synthetic and human voices. Two later studies by Ramos (2015) and Ramos Caro (2016) using the same methods focussed on responses to the emotions of disgust, sadness and fear in clips with and without AD as well as clips using "objective" and "subjective" AD, the latter being a more intensely "descriptive" form including metaphors, inferences and subjective evaluations of the content being described. The self-reported measures in all three studies presented differentiations in response to each emotion elicited, and significant differences where the clips showing fear were concerned, concretizing the value of this emotion for experimental research and foreshadowing its potential to generate meaningful results in the present experiment. ...
Situated at the intersection of Psychology, Film Studies, Accessibility Studies and Translation Studies, this article investigates the emotional correlates of two types of subtitles (standard and aesthetically integrated) on audiences in the context of fear-eliciting clips with Russian fantasy thriller Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2004). Our experiment employed a methodology combining skin conductance (SCR), heart-rate responses (HR) and self-reports (questionnaires) to account for the complex interplay between experiential, cognitive, behavioural and physiological elements that make up emotional responses. We examined the psychophysiological and self-report responses to two subtitling delivery effects-standard subtitles and aesthetically integrated subtitles-focussing specifically on fear. We used significance-testing and Bayesian analyses to compare the two subtitling deliveries. For both analyses, we found that the presentation of aesthetically integrated subtitles led to higher positively rated psychophysiological arousal and quality of viewing experience ratings compared to standard subtitles. This novel finding suggests that aesthetically integrated subtitles could play an important role in the development of new ways to provide audiovisual translation.
... 6 M. Ramos smatra da filmovi s audiodeskripcijom mogu u određenoj mjeri prevladati jaz između dvaju znakovnih sustava te ponekad i izazvati jači emocionalni odgovor od izvornoga filma (Ramos 2015: 70). Istraživanja se emocija povezanih s audiodeskripcijom mogu odnositi na kognitivni i emocionalni odgovor koji ona izaziva i stvara u primaocu (Fryer, Freeman 2014, Fresno 2016, Igareda, Maiche 2009, Iturregui-Gallardo, Soler-Vilageliu 2020, Karantzi 2020, Ramos 2015, Walczak, Fryer 2017) te na aspekte reprezentacije emocionalnosti u audiovizualnome izvoru i način njezina posredovanja u tekstu audiodeskripcije (Anishchenko 2020;Schaeffer-Lacroix 2021, Şulha 2023. Način na koji se reprezentacije emocionalnosti posreduju audiodeskripcijom A. Pavlović dovodi u neposrednu vezu s opisom mimike i gesta: "Emocionalne reakcije i emocionalna stanja koja uzrokuju bitnu radnju likova i pomiču priču dočaravamo opisujući njihove geste i izraze lica" (Pavlović 2021: 20). ...
Audiodeskripcija je poseban oblik unutarjezičnoga prevođenja kojim se vizualni dio poruke audiovizualnoga sadržaja prenosi u odgovarajuću auditivnu informaciju s ciljem njezine dostupnosti osobama oštećena vida. Nakon uvodnih napomena o dostupnosti medijskih sadržaja kojima se informacija prenosi (i) vizualnim kanalom, donosi se pregled temeljnih obilježja audiodeskripcije i načina na koji se njome auditivnim kanalom posreduju emocije pretvorene u znakove drugoga semiotičkog sustava. Audiovizualni tekst koji je polazište za provedenu analizu je igrani film Murina, čiji je sadržaj izvorom za jezične izraze različitih emocija. U filmu se izdvajaju sekvence koje sadrže elemente emocionalno obojene komunikacije izražene neverbalnim ponašanjem, a među njima one u kojima je zastupljena audiodeskripcija. Polazeći od toga da se neverbalnom komunikacijom može izraziti cijeli niz emocija te da se neke emocije mogu povezati s određenim kinezičkim ponašanjem, njegov se verbalni izraz dovodi u vezu s načinom na koji se određena emocija obilježava te se time kompenzira višemodalnost izvornoga igranog filma. Analizom se verbalnih izraza emocionalnih stanja i reakcija želi utvrditi koja se jezična sredstva u tekstu audiodeskripcije koriste za predočavanje emocija likova u filmu. Zaključno se navode zastupljene strategije i tehnike u opisu neverbalnoga ponašanja kao izraza pojedinih emocija.
... Rai et al. (2010) defined the practice as "an additional commentary between the dialogue of a film/ television program that tells the viewer what is happening on the screen so that they can keep up with the action; it bridges the gap in accessibility for a blind or a partially sighted person when watching a film/TV program" (p. 1). According to Ramos (2015), audio description (AD) is a type of audio-visual translation whose purpose is to describe the image; whether the image is used in cinema, theatre, a feature film, or dance, AD makes the audiovisual content accessible to blind people by inserting verbal descriptions between dialogues and music, so that the blind and visually-impaired experience a feeling similar to that of the sighted audience. Matamala and Orero (2007) viewed AD as a form of intersemiotic translation within the context of audio-visual translation and attempted to develop a curriculum for teaching the practice. ...
This study investigated the audio description (AD) of scene change indicators in English
and Persian ADs to determine the degree to which they conform to ITC Guidance on
Standards for Audio Description, along with their similarities and differences. The
Persian ADs were obtained from audio-described Persian dubs of Casablanca, On the
Waterfront, Psycho, Citizen Kane, and the Iranian film Sorkhpust. The English ADs
were obtained from Bruce Almighty, Seven, and Fury films. To this end, 20 minutes of
each film were randomly selected to be analyzed per the ITC guidelines (2000). ITC
guidelines suggest that appropriate indicators must signal scene changes. The results
demonstrated that appropriate indicators sometimes signaled scene changes in both
English and Persian ADs, but these scene changes were also occasionally ignored. In
the English ADs, the percentage for signaling scene changes was 62.83%; this was
53.33% in the Persian ADs. The difference was attributed to a higher frequency of short,
simple temporal, and spatial scene change indicators in the English ADs. Moreover,
potential differences in subjective interpretations of change of location, which can lead
to different perceptions of scene changes and differences in the percentages of using
indicators, may also account for the difference.
... A parallel can also be drawn with audio description (Ramos 2015, Fryer 2016, which is "a type of audiovisual translation that describes the images associated with different audiovisual products (e.g. cinema, theatre, dance). ...
Print media question-answer interviews in the Dutch-speaking press in Belgium show a formal characteristic which is not widely spread in other languages: in the interviewee’s answers, often side comments made by the interviewer are incorporated between brackets. These comments are forms of metadiscourse (Hyland 2019) and we can consider them to be ‘asides’ in the sense Goffman (1981) assigned to the term. This study describes the different forms these asides take in question-answer interviews in two Flemish popular magazines and analyzes their discursive functions. Interviewers who integrate asides in their texts, stage themselves and the readers as participants in the conversation. The analysis of the asides shows that written interviews should be considered as a form of discourse in which three participating parties are involved and in which communication in different directions takes place, rather than as an account in written form of a conversation between interviewer and interviewee.
... Fryer (2013) used SCR and HR in combination with questionnaires to study viewer immersion and the elicitation of amusement, fear and sadness in clips with no AD and those featuring AD delivered by synthetic and human voices. Two later studies by Ramos (2015) and Ramos Caro (2016) using the same methods focussed on responses to the emotions of disgust, sadness and fear in clips with and without AD as well as clips using 'objective' and 'subjective' AD, the latter being a more intensely 'descriptive' form including metaphors, inferences and subjective evaluations of the content being described. The self-reported measures in all three studies presented differentiations in response to each emotion elicited, and significant differences where the clips showing fear were concerned, concretizing the value of this emotion for experimental research and foreshadowing its potential to generate meaningful results in the present experiment. ...
Situated at the intersection of Psychology, Film Studies, Accessibility Studies and Translation Studies, this article investigates the emotional correlates of two types of subtitles (standard and aesthetically integrated) on audiences in the context of fear-eliciting clips with Russian fantasy thriller Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2004). Our experiment employed a methodology combining skin conductance (SCR), heart-rate responses (HR) and self-reports (questionnaires) to account for the complex interplay between experiential, cognitive, behavioural and physiological elements that make up emotional responses. We examined the psychophysiological and self-report responses to two subtitling delivery effects-standard subtitles and aesthetically integrated subtitles-focussing specifically on fear. We used significance-testing and Bayesian analyses to compare the two subtitling deliveries. For both analyses, we found that the presentation of aesthetically integrated subtitles led to higher positively rated psychophysiological arousal and quality of viewing experience ratings compared to standard subtitles. This novel finding suggests that aesthetically integrated subtitles could be the future of audiovisual translation. 3
... Al reconocer la gran influencia que pueden llegar a ejercer las emociones en cualquier actividad humana, este auge alcanza incluso áreas aparentemente apartadas de su radio de influencia como, por ejemplo, la economía (véase Berezin, 2005;Rick y Loewenstein, 2008;Pixley et al, 2014;Besbris, 2016). En el ámbito de los Estudios de Traducción, la investigación de los procesos cognitivos o Translation Process Research (TPR), también parece sumarse a esta tendencia (véase Lehr, 2013;Hubscher-Davidson, 2013;Ramos, 2013Ramos, , 2014Apfelthaler, 2014;Rojo, Ramos y Valenzuela, 2014). Fruto de este reciente interés han surgido algunas iniciativas en torno al binomio traducción-emociones, destacándose la celebración de simposios, como el International Online Workshop on Affective Factors in Translation Process Research organizado por la Universidad de Aston (Birmingham) en 2013, así como la publicación de capítulos y secciones en manuales de traducción, como el Handbook of Translation and Cognition (véase Rojo, 2017). ...
Desde finales del siglo XX venimos asistiendo a una revalorización de las emociones como objeto de estudio en diferentes disciplinas. A pesar de que su tratamiento desde las ciencias y el empirismo es relativamente reciente, las emociones se están consolidando como uno de los temas esenciales en la investigación actual, adquiriendo una presencia significativa en la producción científica (Lewis et al., 2008). Este nuevo espacio que ha ido ganando el estudio de la emoción en diferentes ámbitos se conoce en la literatura como «giro afectivo» (Clough y Halley 2007). Al reconocer la gran influencia que pueden llegar a ejercer las emociones en cualquier actividad humana, este auge alcanza incluso áreas aparentemente apartadas de su radio de influencia como, por ejemplo, la economía (véase Berezin, 2005; Rick y Loewenstein, 2008; Pixley et al, 2014; Besbris, 2016). En el ámbito de los Estudios de Traducción, la investigación de los procesos cognitivos o Translation Process Research (TPR), también parece sumarse a esta tendencia (véase Lehr, 2013; Hubscher-Davidson, 2013; Ramos, 2013, 2014; Ramos y Rojo, 2014; Apfelthaler, 2014; Rojo, Ramos y Valenzuela, 2014). Fruto de este reciente interés han surgido algunas iniciativas en torno al binomio traducción-emociones, destacándose la celebración de simposios, como el International Online Workshop on Affective Factors in Translation Process Research organizado por la Universidad de Aston (Birmingham) en 2013, así como la publicación de capítulos y secciones en manuales de traducción, como el Handbook of Translation and Cognition (véase Rojo, 2017).
Durante el proceso de traducción, los traductores pueden experimentar emociones provocadas por estímulos externos y que pueden repercutir, en última instancia, en la calidad del texto meta. Por otra parte, las traducciones resultantes de una obra artística (especialmente, en el ámbito de la traducción literaria y audiovisual) suelen tener como propósito la inducción de emociones estéticas en los lectores/espectadores. Esto explica el doble interés tanto por descubrir el papel que desempeñan las emociones en el proceso de traducción, como por conocer el impacto emocional de las traducciones en sus lectores. Así, a la hora de investigar los vínculos entre traducción y emociones, es posible adoptar al menos dos concepciones distintas de la actividad traductora: la traducción como tarea cognitiva y la traducción como producción artística. El presente trabajo pretende sacar a la luz los posibles nexos entre emociones y traducción y ofrecer una visión panorámica de las principales tendencias y retos metodológicos en el estudio de un constructo tan polifacético y dinámico como es la emoción. Para ello, este capítulo se estructura en los siguientes apartados: en primer lugar, esboza una panorámica de las dificultades conceptuales y metodológicas para adoptar un tratamiento empírico de la emoción (apartado 2); seguidamente, aborda el estudio de las emociones en los Estudios de Traducción tratando los temas y aspectos de la emoción en los que se ha centrado el interés en los estudios de TPR hasta la fecha (apartado 3), los retos metodológicos a los que se enfrenta la Traducción para trabajar con la emoción (apartado 4) y los resultados más relevantes que apuntan a una correlación entre la creatividad traductológica y la dicotomía entre emociones positivas y negativas (apartado 5). Por último, se valoran las perspectivas de futuro del estudio de las emociones en los Estudios de Traducción (apartado 6). Al cierre, el apartado 7 ofrece las conclusiones y consideraciones finales de esta revisión metodológica.
... An important implication of a scale's psychometric properties is the appropriate degree of generalization of the fndings. For example, emotion scales have been employed in various areas of TIS, including reception studies (Ramos, 2015) and simultaneous interpreting (Korpal & Jasielska, 2019). These studies examine the validity and reliability of their chosen scales, but they also refect on the scope of the results, primarily in the limitations section. ...
Quantitative research in Translation & Interpreting Studies often employs Likert-type scales to measure latent variables. Therefore, a rigorous research agenda demands the development of theoretically grounded scales to quantify unobservable traits or characteristics. Due to the mathematical underdetermination of factor analysis, the validity of those survey scales exists at the ontological level, not the epistemological. In particular, latent variable analysis is dependent upon a realist ontology, presupposing the existence of the trait being measured, and epistemological fallibilism relies on ontological realism. To ensure validity, theories and formal definitions must precede the development of any survey scale, rather than allowing the data and mathematics to lead the investigation. Therefore, methodologists must emphasize the underlying philosophical position of quantitative research, particularly the theoretical basis of scale construction, the benefits of reflective scales, and the need for replication and extension to establish psychometric properties.
... Studies on AVT and media accessibility have used HR mainly to test the audience's emotional response to AV material, whether to different audio-described versions of emotionally loaded video clips, such as a more objective versus a more subjective audio description (Ramos Caro, 2015;, or to different AVT modalities, as in dubbing versus voice-over (Iturregui-Gallardo et al., 2018). ...
This article offers a critical appraisal of two experimental methods used to provide physiological measures of stress and emotions in translation and interpreting research, namely, the analysis of heart rate and heart rate variability, and skin conductance. This is a hands-on introduction to summarize information for fellow-researchers on what these methods are and what they tell us about our body and mind as well as to offer a comprehensive summary of practical applications and analysis standards. The first part of the article introduces the ways in which emotions are experienced and processed in the brain; it provides a framework for interpreting physiological arousal and its role in the perception and construction of emotions. The second part is structured in two parallel sections devoted to each of the two experimental methods. Both sections review existing research on these methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies and discuss the way in which each can best be used in experimental research. They offer suggestions on experiment planning, measurement, data analysis and data reporting. A final remark on ethics and triangulation is offered and some emerging challenges are addressed.
... metaphorical expressions e or the use of prevalent professional practices e e.g. such as the search for objectivity in audio description (Ramos, 2014) e may diminish the emotional impact on the translation audience. ...
This study explores the emotional impact of contextually-relevant source texts (STs) and their influence on student translators’ behavior. During the first weeks of the Spanish COVID-19 lockdown, an experimental study was carried out in which 69 Spanish translation students were instructed to translate two English STs with different evaluative attitudes (i.e. optimistic vs. pessimistic) toward the COVID-19 crisis. The study explored whether the different optimistic vs pessimistic framing of the crisis would influence the students’ use of translation strategies (h1), their levels of anxiety (h2) and their levels of affect (h3) after both reading and translating the STs. Results revealed statistically significant differences between the two translation strategies analyzed (i.e. emphasis and attenuation), with more emphasizing strategies than attenuating ones, regardless of the group. Moreover, a significant effect of the interaction between text and group was also reported, which indicated an overall stronger inclination to alter ―either mitigating or emphasizing― evaluative language in the pessimistic text. A significant increase in participants’ levels of anxiety and negative affect was also found after the pessimistic framing as compared to the optimistic one. Data also pointed to differences between reading and translating in terms of the participant’s anxiety levels, with statistically significant higher anxiety scores after reading than translating.
FULL TEXT AVAILABLE AT: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.01.018
... Similarly, scholarly attention has centered around certain genres, the audio description of film being the most widely studied (see e.g. Fix 2005 andMaszerowska et al. 2014 for collections of textual analyses of film audio description, Mazur and Kruger 2012for reception studies, and Fresno 2014and Ramos 2015 for the study of cognitive and emotional effects in audio description). The AD of visual arts, which is the focus in this paper, is increasingly gaining more attention (e.g. ...
Given the extensive body of research in audio description – the verbal-vocal description of visual or audiovisual content for visually impaired audiences – it is striking how little attention has been paid thus far to the spoken dimension of audio description and its para-linguistic, prosodic aspects. This article complements the previous research into how audio description speech is received by the partially sighted audiences by analyzing how it is performed vocally. We study the audio description of pictorial art, and one aspect of prosody is examined in detail: pitch, and the segmentation of information in relation to it. We analyze this relation in a corpus of audio described pictorial art in Finnish by combining phonetic measurements of the pitch with discourse analysis of the information segmentation. Previous studies have already shown that a sentence-initial high pitch acts as a discourse-structuring device in interpreting. Our study shows that the same applies to audio description. In addition, our study suggests that there is a relationship between the scale in the rise of pitch and the scale of the topical transition. That is, when the topical transition is clear, the rise of pitch level between the beginnings of two consecutive spoken sentences is large. Analogically, when the topical transition is small, the change of the sentence-initial pitch level is also rather small.
... Te drugie uzupełniłyby dane badacza o wiedzę na temat rzeczywistego wpływu konkretnych jednostek semantycznych występujących w ścieżce dialogowej lub scenariuszu AD na aktywację obszarów w mózgu odpowiadających za przetwarzanie takich bodźców 7 . Łatwiej dostępną metodą wspomagającą, także stosowaną przez badaczy odbioru AD, jest pomiar tętna badanych po ekspozycji na dany materiał audio lub audiowizualny (Ramos Caro 2015). ...
Artykuł stanowi podsumowanie komponentu badawczego programu, w ramach którego zrealizowano pokazy filmowe z audiodeskrypcją stworzoną przez studentów Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego. W oparciu o kwestionariusz zbadano preferencje widzących odbiorców audiodeskrypcji w zakresie opisu emocji postaci jednego z odcinków brytyjskiego serialu obyczajowego True Love. Przeanalizowano zgodność interpretacji tych emocji z odczuciami deskryptorów wyrażonymi w scenariuszu AD. Podjęto próbę prześledzenia możliwego wpływu współczesnych koncepcji audiodeskrypcyjnych na wybory dokonane przez autorów badanej ścieżki AD. Zaproponowano także kierunki i metody dalszych badań nad przedmiotowymi zagadnieniami.
... Much research has been conducted in the avant-garde of market AD practices, for instance, looking into alternative approaches such as the strategy-based approach (Maszerowska et al., 2014;Remael, Reviers, & Vercauteren, 2015), reflecting film language in AD (Fryer & Freeman, 2013), auteur and creative descriptions (Szarkowska & Wasylczyk, 2014;Walczak & Fryer, 2017), the use of synthetic voices (Fernández-Torné & Matamala, 2015;Szarkowska, 2011) or interpreted voicing (Jankowska, Kuniecki, Pilarczyk, & Wołoszyn-Hohol, 2019). Finally, AD theory provides something that professional practice often lacks: an insight into audience reactions, since much of the AD research involves audience reception studies (e.g., Chmiel & Mazur, 2016;Fryer & Freeman, 2014;Ramos Caro, 2015;Vilaró & Orero, 2013;Walczak, 2017). ...
Over the past few years, we have been observing an exponential growth in audio description (AD). This has resulted in a growing need for trained AD professionals and, consequently, for AD training. While the ADLAB PRO project helped define the professional profile of the audio describer and produced a range of training materials, there is still considerable room for other AD training approaches to be shared with a view to inspiring AD trainers when creating their courses. Thus, this practice report presents selected exercises that I have been developing since 2009, when I first started teaching AD both at university and outside academia (e.g., during dedicated courses for broadcasters, NGOs and cultural institutions), presenting their learning outcomes and framing them within the ADLAB PRO framework of competencies for professional audio describers. All the activities offered in this article are based on my professional experience as an academic teacher and researcher and also as a professional describer and accessibility manager who overlsees the entire AD production process: from negotiating with clients through production (scripting, proofs, recording, quality control) to product delivery and on-site assistance.
... Bu sonuçlar; sesli betimlemeli filmin görme engelli olmayan bireylerde farklı bir deneyim olması ve sesli betimlemede daha fazla anlatımın olmasına bağlanabilir. Ramos (2015) görme engelli ve görme engelli olmayan toplam 70 kişi üzerinde ve 5 grup üzerinde farklı filmlerin (normal film, görüntüsü olmayan film ve sesli betimlemeli film) duygusal etkilerini belirlemek üzerine bir araştırma yapmıştır. Bu araştırmanın sonucunda nefret ve korku duygularında sesli betimlemenin bulunduğu grupta anlamlı fark bulmuştur. ...
... Existing literature describes different ways in which emotions can be identified from a movie scene [12,14,25]. Some examples include analysing the closed captions, audio description or facial expressions of movie characters. ...
As digital advancements reshape communication, researchers need interdisciplinary methods to understand the cognitive processes involved. This essential reference for advanced students and researchers provides a comprehensive introduction to innovative research methods in cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS). International experts from diverse disciplines share best practices for investigating cognitive processes in multilectal mediated communication. They emphasize the application of these methods across research domains situated at the interface of cognition and communication. The book offers an in-depth analysis of key research methods, explaining their rationales, uses, affordances, and limitations. Each chapter focuses on one or two closely related research methods and their tools, including surveys, interviews, introspective techniques, keylogging, eyetracking, and neuroimaging. The book guides readers in planning research projects and in making informed methodological choices. It also helps readers understand the basics of popular tools, fostering more rigorous research practices in data collection. Additionally, it provides practical suggestions on study design, participant profiling, and data analysis to deepen our understanding of texts, tasks, and their users.
In the last decades, Cognitive Translation Studies (CTIS) have witnessed a growing expansion of Audio Description (AD), with emphasis on experimental studies examining the psychological factors that influence the creation and reception of AD. While most studies have focused on the creation phase of AD, recent reception research has explored emotions, immersion, and presence in the context of AD. A study by Rojo et al. (2021) investigated the impact of AD on the reception of porn, comparing the psychophysiological response of sighted participants watching audiovisual content with blind and sighted participants listening to AD without images. The results indicated no significant differences in physiological and subjective responses. The present study aims at providing further evidence on the participants’ emotional response by analyzing their facial expressions using the FaceReader software (Noldus Information Technology). Unlike cardiac and cortisol responses, the analysis of the participants’ facial expressions reveals some intriguing differences between the groups that point to some emotional differences in the reception of porn.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240508063252/https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/towards-game-translation-user-research/E936DFD62A64C9EF7C32B137C0CF374D#expand
This Element takes the initiative to highlight the nascent state of audiovisual translation research centring on users of video games. It proposes ways of advancing the research by integrating numerous related perspectives from relevant fields to guide studies in translated game reception into further fruition. The Element offers an accessible overview of possible relationships between translation and its experiencers, showcasing ways to design game reception studies. Examples, methods, tools, and practical concerns are discussed to ultimately develop a blueprint for game translation user research which aims to consolidate scientific user-centric inquiry into video game translation. To that end, the blueprint captures the three-pronged interplay between the parameters of localisation-reception research in facets of user experience, facets of translated games, and facets of game users.
En la actualidad, uno de los retos que supone el consumo de series o películas provenientes de plataformas en línea es la traducción de palabras y expresiones de índole coloquial que aparecen en dicho contenido audiovisual, por lo que el tratamiento traductológico de estos elementos requiere de un alto grado de conocimiento de factores socioculturales en ambas lenguas de trabajo para lograr una traducción fiel y precisa en el encargo de traducción audiovisual. Acorde a PACTE (2018) estos conocimientos se encuentran implícitos en las subcompetencia lingüística (SL) y extralingüística (SE), y este conocimiento declarativo va de la mano del procedimental, que se manifiesta en la subcompetencia de transferencia, la traducción per se. El objetivo de esta investigación, de corte empírico-experimental, es analizar la correlación existente entre la SL y la SE, del modelo de Competencia Traductora de PACTE (2011), en el proceso de traducción de coloquialismos en textos audiovisuales en dos grupos de traductores con diferente formación traductológica. Dichos grupos están compuestos por 35 estudiantes de la Licenciatura en Traducción y 15 estudiantes de la Especialidad en Traducción e Interpretación, ambos programas de la Facultad de Idiomas – Campus Mexicali de la UABC. Para la medición de la SL en inglés, se solicitó resolver el examen Pre-TOEFL a ambas agrupaciones. Y en el caso de la SL en español, responder una adaptación del examen SIELE. Por otro lado, la medición de los conocimientos extralingüísticos fue posible gracias a la resolución del Examen de Habilidades y Conocimientos Básicos (EXHCOBA), cuyo propósito es medir el cúmulo de conocimientos que debe poseer un profesionista en cualquier área de profesionalización en México. Acto seguido, los grupos de estudio procedieron con un ejercicio de subtitulación, en el cual se solicita la traducción de diversos videoclips de temáticas variadas cuyo propósito es la traducción de diversas muestras del habla coloquial a nivel social, cultural y jergal en dirección directa e inversa. Por último, el Coeficiente de Pearson presenta una correlación significativa entre las SE, SL y de transferencia, con base en la triangulación de datos obtenidos por medio de los resultados de las pruebas mencionadas, confirmando la hipótesis que conduce este estudio “a mayor posesión de conocimientos extralingüísticos se obtienen mejores resultados en los encargos de traducción”. Además, el estudio propone la cognición situada y la adopción del paradigma socio-constructivista como metodologías en la enseñanza de la traducción audiovisual.
After years in the shadows of translation, research on audio description (AD) is now gaining momentum thanks to its contribution to a more accessible and inclusive world. This paper claims that experimental AD studies have a rightful place in cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS) and discusses some of its limitations and prospects. The first section introduces the relevance and interest of choosing accessibility as a general field of study and AD as a modality of accessible translation. The second section takes a snapshot of existing experimental AD studies and summarizes their main results. Then, useful tips are provided to help confront relevant challenges. The final section discusses the potential of AD research for advancing our knowledge of sensory, multimodal, and cognitive processing and for transferring research results to society.
Accessing video media by people with visual impairments is still a challenge. Audio descriptions are used as a tool to describe images that cannot be perceived by those who cannot see and cannot be understood from dialogues. The creation of audio descriptions involves (1) modifying the videos in terms of additional audio tracks with the use of tools that require specific skills, and (2) the need to alter the original video, unless the same is directly inserted by the producers. In addition, the structure and language used for audio descriptions are often adult-oriented and less designed for children with visual impairments. In this paper, we propose a solution to provide audio descriptions without editing the original videos. A pilot test with 4 children with visual impairment allowed us to evaluate the audio descriptions prepared for a series of episodes of a cartoon popular among children, and the use of the proposed system.
Intersectional feminist translation provides visibility to the historically hidden or marginalized characters and narratives. This article interrogates the strategies we can apply to translate images into words, that is, to audio describe non-normative identities while adhering to the particularities of audiovisual productions. It poses the question of how to provide a feminist audio description that aligns with the creators’ intent. The objective of this study is to analyse the strategies applied to create a gender-conscious AD of a documentary on lesbophobia where ten women share their experiences as non-normative persons. They are defined by a series of intrinsic features such as race, gender expression or age and present a myriad of differences that have irremediably influenced their experience of lesbophobia and how society reads and identifies them. The visual contents in this documentary provide essential information that complements the understanding of the problem by people with visual impairment. This action research study analyses the challenges emerged during the AD production. It aims to emphasize the mediating power of AD professionals and how they influence the understanding of blind audiences.
Although research on the role of emotion in audiovisual translation and audio description has gained some ground in recent years, the emotional reception of subtitles as an AVT mode has been under researched. To address this empirical gap, this paper presents the results of a study on the emotional rating of English and Polish subtitles to a selection of animated films. Expressions from Polish and English subtitled versions of the same films were collected, and 100 participants (native speakers of Polish and English) were asked to rate them in terms of emotional valence and arousal evoked. While the main effect of utterance type (negatively valenced, neutral, positively valenced) was observed, there was no effect of language, suggesting that the subtitle excerpts elicited similar responses in both languages.
This article aims to study the audio description of emotions from a semiotic standpoint. Selected scenes from the first episode of Mucize Doktor will be analyzed. This process involves intralingual and intersemiotic translation. Audio Description includes the description of the visual aspects of any audiovisual media for the accession of the blind and partially sighted receivers. To make films and TV series accessible an additional audible narrative is weaved between dialogues to provide information necessary for understanding what has been conveyed through these forms of art. Films or TV series consist of visual signified which refers to moving and still images and written texts and acoustic signified such as dialogues, sounds and music. Audio described versions of these audiovisual products contain only the acoustic content of the original narrative and the voice of the dubbing actor who speaks the images described through intersemiotic operation. In other words, when describing filmic images or what Peirce calls icons, a problematic conversion takes place which turns images into words or icons into symbols and thus the decision making about whether to remain neutral or interpret what is seen becomes blurred. Audio describer/translator’s choice of deductive or inductive approach determines for instance the way emotions are conveyed to the audience, i.e. is it possible to make an inference or is the character’s feeling already known? (Arma, 2011). Mucize Doktor (2019-2021) is a Turkish adaptation of the Korean series The Good Doctor and it tells the drama of a young and talented doctor Ali Vefa suffering from autistic savant syndrome. This study, focusing on his behaviors and other people’s responses, discusses the audio description of emotions in an attempt to guide the blind viewers through the narrative.
En la actualidad, uno de los retos que supone el consumo de series o películas provenientes de plataformas en línea es la traducción de palabras y expresiones de índole coloquial que aparecen en dicho contenido audiovisual, por lo que el tratamiento traductológico de estos elementos requiere de un alto grado de conocimiento de factores socioculturales en ambas lenguas de trabajo para lograr una traducción fiel y precisa en el encargo de traducción audiovisual. Acorde a PACTE (2018) estos conocimientos se encuentran implícitos en las subcompetencia lingüística (SL) y extralingüística (SE), y este conocimiento declarativo va de la mano del procedimental, que se manifiesta en la subcompetencia de transferencia, la traducción per se. El objetivo de esta investigación, de corte empírico-experimental, es analizar la correlación existente entre la SL y la SE, del modelo de Competencia Traductora de PACTE (2011), en el proceso de traducción de coloquialismos en textos audiovisuales en dos grupos de traductores con diferente formación traductológica. Dichos grupos están compuestos por 35 estudiantes de la Licenciatura en Traducción y 15 estudiantes de la Especialidad en Traducción e Interpretación, ambos programas de la Facultad de Idiomas – Campus Mexicali de la UABC. Para la medición de la SL en inglés, se solicitó resolver el examen Pre-TOEFL a ambas agrupaciones. Y en el caso de la SL en español, responder una adaptación del examen SIELE.
Por otro lado, la medición de los conocimientos extralingüísticos fue posible gracias a la resolución del Examen de Habilidades y Conocimientos Básicos (EXHCOBA), cuyo propósito es medir el cúmulo de conocimientos que debe poseer un profesionista en cualquier área de profesionalización en México. Acto seguido, los grupos de estudio procedieron con un ejercicio de subtitulación, en el cual se solicita la traducción de diversos videoclips de temáticas variadas cuyo propósito es la traducción de diversas muestras del habla coloquial a nivel social, cultural y jergal en dirección directa e inversa.
Por último, el Coeficiente de Pearson presenta una correlación significativa entre las SE, SL y de transferencia, con base en la triangulación de datos obtenidos por medio de los resultados de las pruebas mencionadas, confirmando la hipótesis que conduce este estudio “a mayor posesión de conocimientos extralingüísticos se obtienen mejores resultados en los encargos de traducción”. Además, el estudio propone la cognición situada y la adopción del paradigma socio-constructivista como metodologías en la enseñanza de la traducción audiovisual.
A survey of recent studies in audiovisual translation reveals that audio description (AD), as a service of empowerment and accessibility to media for blind or partially sighted audiences, has been increasingly investigated and researched internationally mostly in European counties and the United State, however. This service is newly developing and rarely offered in Iran. This article aims to initially introduce developments and advancements in AD globally and discuss its production process in the world. The article then explores the current status of AD in Iran and reviews the preliminary measures which have recently been taken in this regard. Within an exploratory approach, the required data were obtained through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with AD practitioners in Iran. The findings are classified and presented in six categories. The findings show that the highest proportion of AD production goes to radio and a non-governmental group, Sevina, respectively, and television as a national mass media has not taken any measure in this regard. Besides, the production of AD on the radio has been limited to Iranian feature films, while the products of Sevina group are more diverse. A number of suggestions for future investigations are also presented.
A survey of recent studies in audiovisual translation reveals that audio description (AD), as a service of empowerment and accessibility to media for blind or partially sighted audiences, has been increasingly investigated and researched internationally mostly in European counties and the United State, however. This service is newly developing and rarely offered in Iran. This article aims to initially introduce developments and advancements in AD globally and discuss its production process in the world. The article then explores the current status of AD in Iran and reviews the preliminary measures which have recently been taken in this regard. Within an exploratory approach, the required data were obtained through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with AD practitioners in Iran. The findings are classified and presented in six categories. The findings show that the highest proportion of AD production goes to radio and a non-governmental group, Sevina, respectively, and television as a national mass media has not taken any measure in this regard. Besides, the production of AD on the radio has been limited to Iranian feature films, while the products of Sevina group are more diverse. A number of suggestions for future investigations are also presented.
Museums face a particular challenge in enabling blind and partially sighted (BPS) visitors to engage emotionally with the narrative(s) they present. In collaboration with a world-leading tourist attraction (Titanic Belfast) and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), we have applied several different approaches for improving emotional engagement for BPS visitors. This paper addresses the critical challenge of how to obtain reliable evidence for evaluating the emotional response of BPS visitors to the museum’s audio description (AD) and overall experience. We consider six different methods for measuring emotional engagement, and consider their potential for providing reliable experimental evidence. Based on BPS-user feedback, we present a qualitative comparison of these methods, uniquely all applied to the same museum context.
In this article we report on an experiment examining audience experience when two different audio description (AD) intonation types are used. Following the classification put forward by Cabeza-Cáceres (2013), we tested twenty participants with vision loss who were asked to listen to twenty film clips with AD voiced following the adapted and emphatic intonation. All clips were rated as evoking emotions, either positive or negative. Participants’ experience was measured through heart rate variability, a self-assessment emotional response (Self-Assessment Manikin), a self-assessment presence questionnaire (ITC-SOPI) and an interview. Results show that participants strongly preferred adapted intonation, particularly when presented clips were evoking negative emotions. Higher rating of intonation type was also linked to greater intensity of the emotional experience and immersion, both self-reported and measured as psychophysiological reaction. The qualitative analysis of the participants’ reports on their experience indicated that adapted intonation is considered a golden mean between emotionless and melodramatic intonation. Film genre, voice type and emotional valence can be influencing factors. Emphatic intonation could be beneficial for certain genres, but a poorly-matched voice can distract the audiences.
Accessibility in sports media broadcast (SMB) remains a problem for blind spectators who wish to socialize and watch sports with friends and family. Although popular, radio’s reliance on low bandwidth speech results in an overwhelming experience for blind spectators. In this paper we focused on two core issues: (i) how SMB can be augmented to convey diegetic information more effectively, and (ii) the social context in which SMB are consumed. We chose tennis broadcasts for our investigations. Addressing issue (i), we developed a system design and prototype to enhance the experience of watching tennis matches, focusing on blind spectators using audio descriptions and 3D audio, and evaluated our system with (n = 12) in a controlled user evaluation. Our results indicate how audio descriptions gave clear information for the tennis ball placements, 3D audio provided subtle cues for the ball direction, and radio provided desired human commentary. For issue (ii), we conducted an online questionnaire (n = 15) investigating the social context in which blind spectators consume SMB. Participant feedback indicated there is a demand for more accessible SMB content such that people can consume SMB by themselves and with their friends. Participants were enthusiastic for a revised system design mixing elements from 3D audio and audio description. We discuss our results in the context of social SMB spectatorship, concluding with insights into accessible SMB technologies.
A survey of recent studies in audiovisual translation reveals that audio description (AD), as a service of empowerment and accessibility to media for blind or partially sighted audiences, has been increasingly investigated and researched internationally mostly in European counties and the United State, however. This service is newly developing and rarely offered in Iran. This article aims to initially introduce developments and advancements in AD globally and discuss its production process in the world. The article then explores the current status of AD in Iran and reviews the preliminary measures which have recently been taken in this regard. Within an exploratory approach, the required data were obtained through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with AD practitioners in Iran. The findings are classified and presented in six categories. The findings show that the highest proportion of AD production goes to radio and a non-governmental group, Sevina, respectively, and television as a national mass media has not taken any measure in this regard. Besides, the production of AD on the radio has been limited to Iranian feature films, while the products of Sevina group are more diverse. A number of suggestions for future investigations are also presented.
Since the 1960S, scholars from different disciplines have been interested in translators and interpreters’ mental activities. From the process-oriented branch of Holmes's (1972/1988) Descriptive Translation Studies through process studies, this disciplinary area has grown and widened to become Cognitive Translation Studies, which comprises competing approaches and several research domains. Common to all of the approaches is the basic assumption that translation is inherently a complex cognitive activity involving not only linguistic structures, but also other skills, knowledge, and abilities. This special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia TTS is offers a panoramic view on current research and thought on theoretical frameworks and empirical research methods in Cognitive Translation Studies.
Several indicators seem to suggest that, through nearly six decades of development, Cognitive Translation Studies (CTS) may be taking shape as an autonomous field of study. The main challenges ahead seem to be building sounder theoretical models and carrying out more rigorous methodological scrutiny. These two strands converge as central themes in the 11 contributions to this special issue of LANS-TTS. To provide a context for theoretical modelling and to frame critical discussions of the methods included in this volume, we first trace the present landscape of CTS and how it evolved so as to test Holmes' criteria for disciplines: founding new channels of communication and sharing a "disciplinary utopia". The contributions are arranged into four thematic categories as applied to CTS, namely, scientometrics, framing or reframing our field, the reliability and validity of popular research methods, and new methods or novel approaches. This article closes with a call to reflect on some fundamental issues on the next steps of humankind regarding communication, with ever-growing societal demands and expectations that call for refreshing our notions of translation in the context of increasingly diversified forms of multilectal mediated communication.
Audio description (AD) is one of the younger modes of translation. It shares many similarities with interpreting, although AD users have specific needs because they are blind or partially sighted. As quality is of concern in both fields, this chapter explores the overlaps to see what can be learned for AD from research already carried out in interpreting. Macro and micro criteria suggested for each discipline are compared, and describer competencies are discussed in the context of AdlabPRO, a European research project that seeks to define the professional profile of an audio describer and develop training materials and courses. The chapter concludes that assessment protocols and rating scales developed for interpreting might be adopted for AD, after appropriate adaptation to accommodate areas where the fit is incomplete. These include synchrony and the need for the AD to be considered, not in isolation, but in relation to the existing audio elements of the source text (ST).
For people with disabilities being part of social life is essential for well-being. To accomplish this there are two possibilities: through interaction in person and through access to culture. One way to enjoy both possibilities is the cinema. For people with sight loss (people that are blind or visually impaired), there exists audio description which allows enjoying a film in a cinema. Project FASEA examined if this audience is as much immersed and could enjoy it as much as sighted people while watching a film with audio description, received through an app called ‘Greta’. Twenty-five people with blindness or visual impairment took part and were matched with sighted people in age, sex, education, and nationality. This was conducted in a commercial cinema under natural conditions with a comedy. We assessed immersion through the Narrative Engagement Scale (NES), the Modes of Reception Inventory (MOR), and the Audience Response Scale (ARS). Enjoyment was evaluated with the Emotions in Media Scale (EMS). People with sight loss showed lower scores in narrative understanding in NES and less thought-provoking and suspense in ARS. Also, they experienced fewer positive emotions. In all other scales, including all MOR scales, there were no differences between them and sighted people. The results confirm that audio description, provided by an application, is a useful tool for people with sight loss to immerse themselves and enjoy films as much as sighted people do and hence be part of social life.
This PhD thesis is an experimental reception study on audio description (AD) for the blind and the visually impaired in which we test the effect of AD narration speed, intonation and explicitation on film comprehension and, secondarily, on enjoyment. First of all, we review and classify the main literature on AD up to 2012, with a special emphasis on Catalonia and Spain. After that, we present the theoretical frame chosen (Branigan 1992) and its concept of narrative schema, which allows us to define film comprehension and to have a theoretical basis to tackle some methodological aspects related to the experiment. Next, we explain the methodological aspects of the research, such as the selection, the narratological analysis and the manipulation of the corpus; the creation of the measurement scale of comprehension; the creation of the experimental groups (blind and visually impaired people) and the control group (sighted people); and other ethical and data processing issues. On the third place, we present a quantitative analysis of the results on comprehension and a qualitative analysis on the enjoyment for the different groups and values of the AD parameters which were manipulated. Finally, we highlight the tendencies observed in the analysis and we provide some recommendations which can be applied both to the professional and the teaching practice of AD and which complement the vagueness of most AD standards.
Aquesta tesi doctoral consisteix en un estudi de recepció experimental sobre audiodescripció (AD) per a persones cegues i amb baixa visió en què es comprova com la velocitat de narració, l'entonació i l'explicitació de l'AD afecten la comprensió fílmica i, secundàriament, el gaudi. En primer lloc, es fa un repàs i una classificació de la bibliografia principal sobre AD fins al 2012, amb èmfasi especial a Catalunya i l'Estat espanyol. Després es presenta el marc teòric triat (Branigan 1992) que, amb el seu concepte d'esquema narratiu, ens serveix per a establir una definició de comprensió fílmica i una base teòrica per a desenvolupar alguns aspectes metodològics de l'experiment. Seguidament, expliquem aspectes metodològics de la tesi com la selecció, l'anàlisi narratològica i la modificació del corpus; la creació de l'escala de mesurament de la comprensió; la creació dels grups experimentals (persones cegues i amb baixa visió) i del grup de control (persones vidents); i diversos aspectes ètics i de processament de les dades. En tercer lloc, presentem una anàlisi quantitativa sobre els resultats de comprensió i una de qualitativa sobre el gaudi dels diferents grups i valors dels paràmetres de l'AD modificats. Finalment, apuntem les tendències observades en l'anàlisi i donem una sèrie d'orientacions que poden ser aplicades tant a la pràctica professional com a la docència de l'AD i que complementen la vaguetat de la majoria d'estàndards sobre AD.
Scholars, such as Braun (2007) and Gambier (2006), have been calling for a cross-fertilization of disciplines concerned with the study of human communication in an attempt to gain a fuller understanding of the complex nature of audio description (AD). The AD script is a hyposemiotic text that uses the aural medium as the sole vehicle for relaying the input derived from visual stimuli, both iconic and verbal. The nonvocal visual and/or verbal input is conveyed as aural output consisting of vocal stimuli (both verbal and nonverbal). As it is the aural medium that is so prominent in AD, one would expect that research in this field would pay more attention to the aural dimension and that it would attract attention from disciplines related to spoken communication and media studies, such as radio broadcasting, television, advertising and film theory. A perusal of the existing literature on media communication reveals the potential of the aural dimension, from the characters’ vocal expression of emotion, to soundtrack, ambient sounds and special effects. While it is true that some scholars have highlighted the critical role of the aural medium in audiovisual products and their translation (Chion 1994; Díaz Cintas et al. 2007; Gottlieb 2005; Matamala 2005; Orero 2005; Salway and Palmer 2007), the true potential of the aural dimension has not yet been fully explored.
Embora estejamos submersos em uma sociedade IT, uma larga acessibilidade à mídia audiovisual ainda é vista mais como um desejo do que como um futuro praticável. Muitas organizações em todos os níveis – local, nacional, e europeu – estão tentando estabelecer uma agenda para a implementação da acessibilidade na mídia ou “de radiodifusão para todos”. Pesquisas têm sido desenvolvidas nas universidades em muitos níveis e em muitas áreas – direito, engenharia, telecomunicações – para fornecer respostas que possam servir como possíveis recomendações a serem implementadas em futuros Atos de Radiodifusão. Este artigo examina o modo de transferência semiótico conhecido como audiolegendagem, como uma alternativa à audiodescrição ao vivo para a ópera, e em particular uma experiência de audiolegendagem na Ópera de Barcelona, o Liceu.
En este trabajo se pretende contrastar si un rasgo positivo de personalidad como es el optimismo podría minimizar el sesgo en el recuerdo diferencial de palabras tras inducir una emoción determinada. Se indujo un determinado estado emocional a 59 sujetos tras mostrarles una lista de palabras con distinta valencia afectiva, instándoles a continuación a recordar dichas palabras. Los resultados encontrados indican una tendencia de los menos optimistas a recordar y reconocer mayor número de palabras negativas en la condición de emoción negativa, alcanzando signifi cación estadística para el grupo femenino de emoción negativa con respecto al reconocimiento de palabras negativas.
AD reception research, or collection of feedback from the blind and partially sighted as the target audience of audio described films, seems to be one of the best sources of information to be applied when creating both AD standards and audio descriptions proper. This paper presents experiences gained by the authors when conducting two reception studies. The first one involved a questionnaire distributed to 18 viewers with vision dysfunctions immediately after two screenings of audio described films. The other one is a larger-scale work-in-progress, whose results will be applied in the development of Polish AD standards reflecting the preferences of the blind and visually impaired viewers in Poland, where the participants are being interviewed and presented with AD samples. The authors discuss various methodological issues, including problems with obtaining a sufficient number of participants, reflecting feedback from visually-impaired AD consultants in the surveys and discovering user preferences. It is suggested that responses concerning objectivity or subjectivity of descriptions should be elicited indirectly (implicitly) rather than directly (explicitly) and that research results are more meaningful if interviews involve comprehension questions and AD samples.
This article aims to outline the issues involved in the production and reception of film sound with a view to identifying its challenges for audio-description (AD). It thereby hopes to provide insights into the way in which a careful analysis and integration of film sound and sound effects are required for the production of coherence in AD, if it is to function as part of a new filmic text. However, the article also points to the limits of analysis and interpretation, and to the need for reception research as well as collaboration with visually impaired users. A detailed analysis of a scene from Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg 1998), a film that won an Oscar for best sound effect editing, demonstrates how complex and narratively charged the soundscape of a film can be, thereby exposing the challenges for the audio-describer and, again, demonstrating the need for further research involving the target audience.
This study examines empirically the possible relationships between the emotional quality one can attribute to musical stimuli (expressed emotion, or external locus of emotion) and the subjective emotional response one can have as a result of listening to music (felt emotion, or internal locus). The relationship between the two loci of emotion is often assumed to be positive, that is, when listening to music, one feels the emotion that the music expresses. Gabrielsson has suggested, however, that this assumption is simplistic, and has proposed a model that describes other possible relationships. The present study quantitatively investigates Gabrielsson's proposal. Forty-five participants responded to questions about both expressed emotion and felt emotion for two familiar experimenter-selected pieces (Pachelbel's Canon and Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem) and one or two pieces of their own selection. Participants were asked to "imagine" their self-selected pieces in the absence of recordings or a live performance. An experimenter-selected piece was both sounded and imagined, and no significant difference was observed in responses between the two conditions. Quantitative criteria were generated in order to compare the loci (internal and external) of each piece in geometric space. Results showed that the positive relationship, where the internal and external locus emotions are the same, occurred in 61% of cases. In general, these pieces were preferred more than those exhibiting non-positive relationships. Implications for practices that tacitly assume a 100% positive relationship, or are not specific about the locus of emotion, are discussed. © 2008 by ESCOM European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.
This paper identifies several serious problems with the widespread use of ANOVAs for the analysis of categorical outcome variables such as forced-choice variables, question-answer accuracy, choice in production (e.g. in syntactic priming research), et cetera. I show that even after applying the arcsine-square-root transformation to proportional data, ANOVA can yield spurious results. I discuss conceptual issues underlying these problems and alternatives provided by modern statistics. Specifically, I introduce ordinary logit models (i.e. logistic regression), which are well-suited to analyze categorical data and offer many advantages over ANOVA. Unfortunately, ordinary logit models do not include random effect modeling. To address this issue, I describe mixed logit models (Generalized Linear Mixed Models for binomially distributed outcomes, Breslow & Clayton, 1993), which combine the advantages of ordinary logit models with the ability to account for random subject and item effects in one step of analysis. Throughout the paper, I use a psycholinguistic data set to compare the different statistical methods.
Introduction. Emotional responsiveness (ER) has been theorized to play a protective role in pathways to tobacco initiation, regular use, and dependence, yet a possible association between ER and smoking behavior has not been studied. Our aim was to test whether measuring ER to a neutral stimulus was associated with decreased odds of current smoking. Methods. We measured ER and smoking status (current, former, and never) in two datasets: a cross-sectional dataset of persons with diabetes (
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In this study, the authors investigate the relationship between the musical soundtrack and visual images in the motion picture experience. Five scenes were selected from a commercial motion picture along with their composer-intended musical scores. Each soundtrack was paired with every visual excerpt, resulting in a total of 25 audiovisual composites. In Experiment 1, the 16 subjects selected the composite in which the pairing was considered the "best fit." Results indicated that the composer-intended musical score was identified as the best fit by the majority of subjects for all conditions. In Experiment 2, the 15 subjects rated all 25 composites on semantic differential scales. A significant interaction (p
A consistent theme across general theories of emotion is that intense emotions are accompanied by increased levels of physiological arousal. The aim in the current study was to determine whether music which elicited intense emotions produced higher levels of physiological arousal than less emotionally powerful music. Twenty-one participants (9 females, 12 males) were exposed to relaxing music, arousing (but not emotionally powerful) music, an emotionally powerful film scene, and a music piece selected by participants as 'emotionally powerful'. A range of physiological and subjective measures of arousal was recorded before and during the treatments. The emotionally powerful music treatment elicited significantly greater increases in skin conductance and number of chills than the other treatments. The findings are discussed in terms of the sensitivity of skin conductance and chills as measures of emotional intensity, and it is suggested the study offers some support for the emotivist thesis of musical emotions. Copyright
This experiment examined responses to excerpted episodes from short stories that either focused on action or on the experiences of the characters. The effects of instructional sets to approach the texts from the viewpoint of subjective involvement or objective detachment were also studied. The two story types and two reading sets were factorially combined in a within-subjects design. Scale ratings of the story excerpts and reading times (syllables per second) were measured. A total of subjects (20 males and 20 females) read six segments from each of the episodes as quickly and accurately as possible. Pretest data were obtained for each segment indicating how much it “provided insight into the characters' experiences”, and its level of suspense and surprise. Segments which “provided in sight” were read more slowly, whereas surprising segments were read more quickly. Under the Subjective Set, subjects slowed the pace of reading if they judged the text to be “rich in meaning about life”. For the Objective Set, stories that were judged to have evoked “images” were read more slowly. Females were more responsive to the Subjective Set than were the males, finding the stories to be “richer in meaning” and more “personally relevant”. Females also slowed their reading pace for segments that they judged to be “rich in meaning about life”, while males slowed down if the stories evoked “images”.
Despite the great interest in the reception of art and media in recent years, little attention has been paid to the way in which narrative fictions, whether high or low, address the emotions of readers, listeners, and viewers. Instead, emphasis is generally placed on hermeneutics. Interpretation of what is loosely called the meaning of the work has preoccupied attention in the humanities. New interpretations, often called symptomatic readings, of what are generically identified as “texts” are still the order of the day in liberal arts journals. And even what some in cultural studies call “recodings,” and what some feminists call “readings against the grain,” focus on the putative interpretive activities of certain groups of readers, listeners, and viewers. What is not studied in any fine-grained way is how works engage the emotions of the audience. What I wish to deal with in this article is how we might go about doing just that.
It is not my contention that, in principle, hermeneutics is illegitimate. Rather, I think that our research into the arts should be supplemented by considering their relation to the emotions, especially if we are interested in audience reception. Moreover, the present moment is particularly propitious in this respect, since recent research into the emotions over the last two decades in fields like psychology and philosophy have made the possibility of interrogating the relation of art to the emotions feasible with a heretofore un imagined level of precision.
The position of emotion in music has been a subject of considerable interest and debate. However emotional aspects of music have received surprising little attention in the 45 years since the publication of Leonard Meyer's classic work 'Emotion and meaning in music.' During that time, both 'music psychology' and 'emotion' have developed as lively areas of research, and the time is fitting therefore to try and bring together this multidisciplinary interest and take stock of what we now know about this important relationship. A new volume in the Series in Affective Science, Music and Emotion; Theory and Research brings together leading researchers interested in both these topics to present the first integrative review of this subject. The first section reflects the various interdisciplinary perspectives, taking on board views from philosophy, psychology, musicology, biology, anthropology, and sociology. The second section addresses the role of our emotions in the composition of music, the ways that emotions can be communicated via musical structures, the use of music to express emotions within the cinema. The third section looks at the emotions of the performer - how do they communicate emotion, how does their emotional state affect their own performance. The final section looks at the ways in which our emotions are guided and influenced while listening to music, whether actively or passively. Music and Emotion is a timely book, one that will interest psychologists, musicologists, music educators, and philosophers.
This volume is a comprehensive roadmap to the burgeoning area of affective sciences, which now spans several disciplines. The Handbook brings together, for the first time, the various strands of inquiry and latest research in the scientific study of the relationship between the mechanisms of the brain and the psychology of mind. In recent years, scientists have made considerable advances in understanding how brain processes shape emotions and are changed by human emotion. Drawing on a wide range of neuroimaging techniques, neuropsychological assessment, and clinical research, scientists are beginning to understand the biological mechanisms for emotions. As a result, researchers are gaining insight into such compelling questions as: How do people experience life emotionally? Why do people respond so differently to the same experiences? What can the face tell us about internal states? How does emotion in significant social relationships influence health? Are there basic emotions common to all humans? This volume brings together the most eminent scholars in the field to present, in sixty original chapters, the latest research and theories in the field. The book is divided into ten sections: Neuroscience; Autonomic Psychophysiology; Genetics and Development; Expression; Components of Emotion; Personality; Emotion and Social Processes; Adaptation, Culture, and Evolution; Emotion and Psychopathology; and Emotion and Health. This major new volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers that will define affective sciences for the next decade.
The scientific study of emotion has long been dominated by theories emphasizing the subjective experience of emotions and their accompanying expressive and physiological responses. The processes by which different emotions are elicited has received less attention, the implicit assumption being that certain emotions arise automatically in response to certain types of events or situations. Such an assumption is incompatible with data showing that similar situations can provoke a range of emotions in different individuals, or even the same individual at different times. Appraisal theory, first suggested by Magda Arnold and Richard Lazarus, was formulated to address this shortcoming in our understanding of emotion. The central tenet of appraisal theory is that emotions are elicited according to an individual's subjective interpretation or evaluation of important events or situations. Appraisal research focuses on identifying the evaluative dimensions or criteria that predict which emotion will be elicited in an individual, as well as linking the appraisal process with the production of emotional responses. This book represents the first full-scale summary of the current state of appraisal research. Separate sections cover the history of apraisal theory and its fundamental ideas, the views of some of the major theorists currently active in the field, theoretical and methodological problems with the appraisal approach including suggestions for their resolution, social, cultural and individual differences and the application of appraisal theory to understanding and treating emotional pathology, and the methodology used in appraisal research including measuring and analyzing self-report, physiological, facial, and vocal indicators of appraisal, and simulating appraisal processes via computational models. Intended for advanced students and researchers in emotion psychology, it provides an authoritative assessment and critique of the current state of the art in appraisal research.
How people assign mental states to others and how they represent or conceptualize such states in the first place are topics of interest to philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Three competing answers to the question of how people impute mental states to others have been offered: by rationalizing, by theorizing, or by simulating. Simulation theory says that mindreaders produce mental states in their own minds that resemble, or aim to resemble, those of their targets; these states are then imputed to, or projected onto, the targets. In low-level mindreading, such as reading emotions from faces, simulation is mediated by automatic mirror systems. More controlled processes of simulation, here called “enactment imagination”, are used in high-level mindreading. Just as visual and motor imagery are attempts to replicate acts of seeing and doing, mindreading is characteristically an attempt to replicate the mental processes of a target, followed by projection of the imagination-generated state onto the target. Projection errors are symptomatic of simulation, because one’s own genuine states readily intrude into the simulational process. A nuanced form of introspection is introduced to explain self-attribution and also to address the question of how mental concepts are represented. A distinctive cognitive code involving introspective representations figures prominently in our concepts of mental states. The book concludes with an overview of the pervasive effects on social life of simulation, imitation, and empathy, and charts their possible roles in moral experience and the fictive arts.
Everyone knows the thrill of being transported by a film, but what is it that makes movie watching such a compelling emotional experience? In Moving Viewers, Carl Plantinga explores this question and the implications of its answer for aesthetics, the psychology of spectatorship, and the place of movies in culture. Through an in-depth discussion of mainstream Hollywood films, Plantinga investigates what he terms "the paradox of negative emotion" and the function of mainstream narratives as ritualistic fantasies. He describes the sensual nature of the movies and shows how film emotions are often elicited for rhetorical purposes. He uses cognitive science and philosophical aesthetics to demonstrate why cinema may deliver a similar emotional charge for diverse audiences.
This volume sign posts several paths of multimodality research and theory-building today. The chapters represent a cross-section of current perspectives on multimodal discourse with a special focus on theoretical and methodological issues (mode hierarchies, modelling semiotic resources as multiple semiotic systems, multimodal corpus annotation). In addition, it discusses a wide range of applications for multimodal description in fields like mathematics, entertainment, education, museum design, medicine and translation.
This book provides analysis of how human biology, as well as human culture, determines the ways films are made and experienced. This new approach is called "bioculturalism." The book shows how important formats, such as films for children, romantic films, pornography, fantasy films, horror films, and sad melodramas, appeal to an array of different emotions that have been ingrained in the human embodied brain by the evolutionary process. The book also discusses how these biological dispositions are molded by culture. It explains why certain themes and emotions fascinate viewers all over the globe at all times, and how different cultures invest their own values and tastes in the universal themes.The book further uses the breakthroughs of modern brain science to explain central features of film aesthetics and to construct a general model of aesthetic experience, the PECMA flow model, which explains how the flow of information and emotions in the embodied brain provides a series of aesthetic experiences. The combination of film theory, cognitive psychology, neurology, and evolutionary theory provides explanations for why narrative forms are appealing and how and why art films use different mental mechanisms than those that support mainstream narrative films, as well as how film evokes images of inner, spiritual life and feelings of realism. Embodied Visions provides a new synthesis in film and media studies and aesthetics that combines cultural history with the long history of the evolution of our embodied brains.
This book takes the insights of modern psychological and neuroscientific research on the emotions and brings them to bear on questions about our emotional involvement with the arts. It begins by laying out a theory of emotion, one that is supported by the best evidence from current empirical work on emotions, and then in the light of this theory examines some of the ways in which the emotions function in the arts. Written in a clear and engaging style, the book will make fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in the emotions and how they work, as well as anyone engaged with the arts and aesthetics, especially with questions about emotional expression in the arts, emotional experience of art forms, and, more generally, artistic interpretation. Part One develops a theory of emotions as processes, having at their core non-cognitive 'instinctive' appraisals, 'deeper than reason', which automatically induce physiological changes and action tendencies, and which then give way to cognitive monitoring of the situation. Part Two examines the role of the emotions in understanding literature, especially the great realistic novels of the 19th century. It is argued that such works need to be experienced emotionally if they are to be properly understood. A detailed reading of Edith Wharton's novel The Reef demonstrates how a great novel can educate us emotionally by first evoking instinctive emotional responses, and then getting us to cognitively monitor and reflect upon them. Part Three puts forward a new Romantic theory of emotional expression in the arts. Part Four deals with music, both the emotional expression of emotion in music, whether vocal or instrumental, and the arousal of emotion by music. The way music arouses emotion lends indirect support to the theory of emotion outlined in Part One.
There is evidence suggesting that watching movies usually provokes an emotional response in the audience that may differ according to the type of film viewed. For example, Grodal (2009) argues that the type of response provoked by mainstream cinema is different from that elicited by avant-garde films. In visually impaired audiences, the emotional impact of films is inevitably mediated by the Audio Description (AD) provided. In most countries AD norms do not cater for variations between different types of films. There exists, therefore, the possibility that the emotional impact of the film could be affected or altered by the AD. This paper aims to explore possible differences in the response of sighted versus unsighted audiences when watching avant-garde and narrative films. A pilot study is designed to measure the emotional response through self-response questionnaires. Our results indicate that differences between both types of audience are more prominent for avant-garde films.
This paper presents the beginning of a corpus-based investigation into the language used for audio description. The automated analysis of audio description scripts for 91 films was successful in characterising some idiosyncratic features of what appears to be a special language. Our investigation also began to create an empirically-grounded overview and classification of the main kinds of information provided by audio description. The existence of a special language is explained in part by the fact that audio description is produced by trained professionals following established guidelines, and its idiosyncrasies are explained by considering its communicative function – in particular that it is being used to tell a story. Encouraged by the relatively high degree of regularity observed in the corpus, we go on to speculate about the application of language technologies for 'assisted audio description' and for repurposing audio description as a basis for indexing digital video archives.
We investigated the effects of musical soundtracks on attitudes to figures in a short animated film. In a preliminary study and in the main experiment, subjects saw the film accompanied by one of two soundtracks or with no soundtrack, or they heard one of the two soundtracks alone. In the main experiment, Semantic Differential judgments on Activity and Potency dimensions, obtained for the music, predicted effects of the soundtracks on corresponding ratings of the film as compared to ratings in a no soundtrack condition. As well, ratings on the Activity dimension of the film characters themselves were altered by the soundtracks. It is hypothesized that congruent auditory and visual structure directs the encoding of particular visual features of the film. In addition, associations generated by the music provide a context for the interpretation of the action in the film. As a result, stimulus features and concepts that are initially encoded as disjunctive conjoin in perception and memory.
Television plays an important role in the lives of visually impaired people yet they face considerable barriers to accessing it fully. AUDETEL (AUdio DEscribed TELevision) is a way of enhancing television for visually impaired people by inserting descriptions in the natural gaps in a programme. This article reports on the results of a field trial of AUDETEL conducted by RNIB in 1994. It covers: the television viewing patterns of a sample of 100 visually impaired people; what they find difficult in accessing television; and the impact of AUDETEL in removing these barriers. The results of the trial indicate that AUDETEL goes a long way to improving access to television by enabling visually impaired people to "watch" programmes which had previously been inaccessible and to enhance those which are "watched" regularly.
Two questions are addressed. The first question pertains to the capacity of film segments to induce emotional states that are: (a) as comparable as possible to naturally occurring emotions; (b) similar across individuals; and (c) clearly differentiated across the intended emotions. The second question concerns the discriminant capacity of self-report questionnaires of emotion-feeling states differing in their theoretical assumptions. Subjects viewed six short film segments and rated the strength of their responses on one of three kinds of questionnaires. The questionnaires were: (1) the Differential Emotions Scale that postulates category-based distinctions between emotions; (2) the Semantic Differential that postulates that emotions are distinguished along bipolar dimensions; and (3) free labelling of their feelings by the subjects (control condition with no theoretical a priori). Overall, results indicate that film segments can elicit a diversity of predictable emotions, in the same way, in a majority of individuals. In the present procedure, the Differential Emotions Scale yielded a better discrimination between emotional states than the Semantic Differential. Implications for emotion research and theories of the cognitive structure of emotion are discussed.
Researchers interested in emotion have long struggled with the problem of how to elicit emotional responses in the laboratory. In this article, we summarise five years of work to develop a set of films that reliably elicit each of eight emotional states (amusement, anger, contentment, disgust, fear, neutral, sadness, and surprise). After evaluating over 250 films, we showed selected film clips to an ethnically diverse sample of 494 English-speaking subjects. We then chose the two best films for each of the eight target emotions based on the intensity and discreteness of subjects' responses to each film. We found that our set of 16 films successfully elicited amusement, anger, contentment. disgust, sadness, surprise, a relatively neutral state, and, to a lesser extent, fear. We compare this set of films with another set recently described by Philippot (1993), and indicate that detailed instructions for creating our set of film stimuli will be provided on request.
Music's relationship with emotion has been the subject of numerous philosophical and psychophysiological studies in recent years. The question of whether music merely expresses or actively arouses emotion in its listeners, however, gains added complexities when considered in the context of film. What is going on, for example, when we believe ourselves to be afraid in the cinema; and how does the presence of a musical heartbeat contribute to this feeling? In this article I answer those questions, firstly by invoking the notion of 'perceptual realism' and questioning a number of comfortable givens in film music theory (including the nondiegetic status of music), and secondly by proposing a 'heartbeat hypothesis' that combines empirical and philosophical approaches to musical emotion with theories of cinematic fiction. This hypothesis suggests that heartbeats are effective at helping us experience 'fictional fear' precisely because the real-world emotion of fear is fundamentally about the body; that there is a strong relationship between our response to music and our own ability to produce sounds (Cox's 'mimetic hypothesis'); and that, as a result, we may recognise and interpret certain cinematic musical gestures in the context of our own corporeality as fear-inducing. I explore a number of film scenes that feature the sound of heartbeats, or heartbeat rhythms in their scores, before making some comments on the wider implications of the hypothesis for film music theory in particular, and musicology in general.