The Research Challenge

The TV and Film industries spend millions of dollars per year on audience response measurement, trying to predict the next blockbuster movie or TV hit, but with only minimal success. Audience self-reports of liking and disliking tend to be poor predictors or box office or TV program success.

The key challenge in media research is that TV shows and movies are complex stimuli, playing out over time in an intricate flow of plot line, character development, music, scene transitions, and peaks and valleys of suspense, anticipation, surprise, and resolution. Successful entertainment is immersive - we forget ourselves in a good story. When audience members are asked to assess a program while they are watching it, the evaluative task changes their experience. And when asked to assess a program after watching it, they are poor at reconstructing how they actually responded.

Why Neuroscience Matters

Neurometric measures of attention, emotion, and memory can be gathered while a person is actually immersed in the entertainment experience. They can be calibrated on a moment-to-moment basis, so ongoing fluctuations of attention, interest, and engagement can be tracked and peaks of suspense, surprise, and humor can be compared to expectations and intentions. Reactions across audience members can be compared and correlated, to see when and how common experiences converge.

How Lucid Can Help ...