The physiology of the body changes when a visual stimulus is presented, but the strength of the change may depend on whether the stimulus is expected or not. The research within the Master thesis aims to investigate more specifically the difference between physiological responses/changes in arousal when a stimulus is expected and when it is not expected. This was done using a wearable device - the Senstream ring. The ring has been be used to measure the following parameters: electrodermal activity, heart rate and finger temperature.
Subjective assessment of arousal has been measured with a customised SAM (self- assessment manikin) questionnaire to be compared with the measured physiological parameters. By linking the measured physiology and subjective assessment, the disciplines of physiology and psychology were brought together to gain insight into how the human body responds to stimuli and how this response is subjectively assessed and experienced by the individual.
The hypothesis of the research is focused on whether there had been a statistically significant difference in the parameter between the two experimental conditions: in one condition the visual stimulus was expected, in the other condition the stimulus was unexpected. It was expected that the measured physiology of the participants and the subjective evaluation will differ between these two conditions, namely that in the condition with the expected stimulus, the arousal response will be higher in the measured physiology and also in the subjective evaluation. The null hypothesis would therefore be that there will be no statistically significant difference in the measurements and ratings between the two conditions.
The importance of the study is to better understand the influence of stimulus expectancy on human psychophysiology using one of the newer tools for measuring physiological signs, the Senstream ring. The usefulness of this method of measuring arousal can be seen in a variety of fields: medicine, marketing, therapy, etc., as will be described in more detail in the discussion section.
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