A novel continuous measure for subjective experiences: Implications for neuroimaging.

Poster Session E - Monday, April 15, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Anvita Gopal¹ (anvitagopal@gmail.com), Adrian Safati¹, James Danckert¹; ¹University of Waterloo

Functional neuroimaging studies are often concerned with correlating subjective experiences with neural data. The most common method for doing so involves periodic probes that interrupt task performance, rely on discrete responses, may suffer from range limitations, and thereby limit the granularity of participants' subjective experiences. To address this limitation, we developed a novel mechanism to collect continuous feedback of subjective experiences during a mood induction. Participants were induced to feel either boredom or interest and used a rotating dial to express in real-time their subjective experiences (rightward movements indicated increased levels of affect). Traditional Likert-scale measures were also taken before and after mood induction. The rate of change of responses on the dial (i.e., slope) significantly correlated with the change in pre and post Likert responses (r = 0.44) indicating that this method minimally captures what is measured in Likert scales. The dial provided more information based on individual differences in boredom proneness such that the slope describing state boredom changes was steeper for the highly boredom prone. This dynamic was not captured in the Likert scales. This method of collecting continuous subjective reports may provide important insights when paired with neural data that would be missed with more traditional approaches

Topic Area: METHODS: Other