Hello,

I think you need to perform a state of art on the notion of "interest", after that you will be able to built your model. For exemple, interest does it mean immersion+attention+presence ? After define the meaning of "interest", you will be able to link with physiological measure.

I would have started with this aproach.

J-Marc D.

Agreed with Diverrez J-Marc. Interest isn't necessary an emotion, I would say it is more in line with a motivation to approach. One might try this "approach motivation" state measure that is popularly indexed by frontal asymmetry (I am doubtful it is a good predictor, but people suggest it could be a significant one - different things). That's usually done with EEG (or fNIRS).

If you want to do interest = not bored: lack of alpha activity. (EEG)

If you want to do interest = really excited! ECG (BPM).

If you want to do interest with this particular, super-well defined picture: P3 (EEG).

If you want to do interest = noticing the solid fun involved in such classics as "The E-Primer" (ahum), perhaps facial EMG, ZM measurements.

If you want to do interest = concentrating on the text while reading, perhaps facial EMG, CS measurements. Eye-tracking, in terms of detecting whether a person is actually reading, also sounds reasonable (more to the point, I'd say).

Do note that in all such cases, the fact that researchers found that "interest" (or motivation, or something else) reliably affects physiological correlate Y doesn't mean that the reverse is true. Since all known methods are extremely noisy and reliably confounded with other constructs, it is important to ask yourself what you exactly plan to gain. It is likely that just asking the student whether they're interested will be a much better predictor.

Best,

Michiel

Hi,

I think it may be also neccesary to employ a measure of point of gaze in addition to psychophysiological measures you'll decide to use (at least if you'll deal with visual stimuli, since looking at something would be an indicator of interest in this object).

Also for operationalization of the immersion based on psychophysiological markers checklook at papers by Regan Mandryk.

Best

CB

Dear Jooree, as stated above, interest is not exactly a primary emotion, but it is definitely accompanied by arousal and therefore changes in autonomic nervous system activity. Therefor eyou should focus on measures of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity. Among those that you mention, ECG, pupil diameter and skin conductance. Please consider that unlike the first two, skin conductance measures only sympathetic output but not parasympathetic output.

Thank you all very much for your answers. they were helpful! I guess I need to read more about other emotions that might be involved in this process or interrelates with interest like curiosity, joy.. etc and also the relative cognitive processes.

I'm depending on Izard's theory that stated interest as one of the basic emotions and the interest-cognition-action sequence.

its difficult to separate affect and cognition relationship when it comes to learning. we are using audio-visual stimuli (video) and would like to assess student interest - that leads to attention, understanding and focus-  through out the played video. eye-tracking seems good to detect the gaze but doesn't till whether you are really thinking of the video or something else! combining it with EEG or ECG would be beneficial but might not be reliable (time and cost).