my papers aren’t about message testing, but do call for and then test attention as the DV using pshyio experiments in a free choice setting :) maybe they have some relevance to this discussion with @kwcollins.bsky.social !! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... and www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Thanks, Mark!

The afternoon begins with the PhD students presenting their papers. Three sessions are held simultaneously. There is a lot of good research to catch up on! #PolcommPreconference25 #ICA25 #ICA2025

this study was quite a challenge (learning JavaScript and recruiting participants off the street are no joke!), but I’m so excited it’s finally out for the world to read 🥹

I find that, amongst subjects who decided to leave a video before it ended, most of the time (~70%) they left with decreased activation. on average, then, these findings uphold the idea from the physio literature that there is a positive correlation between activation and attention.

subjects navigated a custom built YouTube-like website w/ 35 pretested videos, and were allowed to watch each video they chose for as long as they wanted. there were entertainment and news clips, positive and negative. when they wanted to choose a new clip, they were given a choice of a random pair.

this study is largely based on my piece with @snsoroka.bsky.social and Johanna Dunaway that lays out the theory and reasoning for further investigation of the relationship between activation and attention (you can find that one here: doi.org/10.1080/1461...)