Effect of Advance Elevation of PhysiologicalActivities on Emotionally Appealing
Jump-performance Scene of Figure Skating
Tatsuki Makioka

Shogo Okamoto

Tokyo Metropolitan UniversityHino, JapanTokyo Metropolitan UniversityHino, Japan

Abstract—This study investigated whether the intensity ofemotional arousal can be magniﬁed by presenting vibratory
stimuli to upper body before emotionally appealing scenes ofsports videos. To test this possibility, we gave vibratory stimuli
to the thoracoabdominal part of participants while they watchedcompetitive ﬁgure skating videos. The vibrations were introduced
at two time points—just before the jump performance scene andright at the moment the jump occurred. The former increased
the viewers’ physiological activities, that is, skin conductance
responses; however, no clear effects were observed on subjectiveexcitement. In contrast, the vibratory stimuli at the moment of
the jump had a deﬁnite effect on physiological and subjective responses. Thus, the effects of stimuli presented before emotionallyappealing scenes are inconclusive in case of ﬁgure skating videos.
In contrast, the before-scene stimuli was found to be effective forhorror videos in an earlier study. Thus, the effects may dependon the type of emotions evoked by videos.
Index Terms—emotion, vibratory stimuli, audio-visual contents

I. I NTRODUCTION
Vibratory stimuli increase emotional experiences evokedwhile watching videos [1]–[5]. It is not necessary for suchvibratory stimuli to coincide in time with the emotional scenes
in the videos [6]. Makioka et al. demonstrated that vibratory
stimuli presented before fear-evoking scenes in horror videos
made the scenes appear scarier [6]. Although the mechanism is
not clear, it is possible that the viewer’s physiological activity
was enhanced by vibration presented in advance (“precedingvibration”) and the feeling elicited by the subsequent scene
was magniﬁed. Thus far, the inﬂuence of preceding vibration
was studied using horror videos [6]. Hence, by employing
exciting sports videos in this study, the effects of physiologicalactivation before emotionally appealing scenes can be generalized.
II. M ETHODS
A. Apparatus
We used a voice coil motor (Vp604, Acouve Laboratory,Inc., Japan) to stimulate the thoracoabdominal section of thebody. The voice coil motor was placed in contact with theparticipant’s epigastric fossa through a vest, as shown in Fig. 1.
A similar apparatus was used in our earlier study [6].
The skin conductance response was measured using APU030m II (Nihon Suntech, Japan) and a condition ampliﬁer

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Fig. 1. Stimulus timing and waveform. Adopted from [1], [6].

(MaPI720CA, Nihon Suntech, Japan)．Electrodes were placedon the ventral surface of the second and third ﬁngers of theparticipant’s non-dominant hand.
Audiovisual stimuli were played using a signage player(BrightSign/HD220, BrightSign, Inc., CA). The movie wasplayed using a 21-inch monitor, and the distance between themonitor and the participant’s eyes was 60 cm．Audio waspresented through headphones connected to the monitor.
The voice coil motor, skin conductance response meter，and signage player were connected to a DAQ device (NIUSB-6211, National Instrument Corp., TX) and controlled
synchronously by Data Acquisition Toolbox of Matlab (Mathworks, Inc., MA).
B. Audio-visual and vibratory stimuli
A total of eight competition videos of different ﬁgureskaters, four males and four females, were used as audiovisual
stimuli. The videos were played from the beginning of theperformance until the completion of the ﬁrst jump. All videos
lasted 30–40 s.
As shown in Fig. 1, two types of sinusoidal vibratory
stimuli were used, that is, preceding and main vibration. The
main vibration was presented when the competitor jumpedand lasted 640 ms. The amplitude was modulated along thetriangular waveform, reaching a peak over 320 ms from zeroamplitude, then decreasing from peak to zero over 320 ms. The
preceding vibration, whose amplitude was one-third that of the635

main vibration, was presented just before the jump and lasted
1.5 s. The durations of these stimuli were chosen by referringto the previous study [1] to ﬁt the scene of the competitor’sjump.
C. Procedures
There were four types of vibration conditions: no vibration,
only preceding vibration before the jump, only main vibration
during the jump scene, and the combined condition of preceding and main vibration. The combination and order of thefour vibration conditions and videos were randomized for eachparticipant. Participants experienced each condition twice, fora total of eight videos. Participants watched the videos while
wearing the vests in all stimulus conditions. Thus, they were
not aware of the stimulus conditions in advance. After viewing
each video, the participants reported the intensity of their
excitement at the jump scene on a 9-point Likert scale.
D. Participants
Seven university students (three females) in their 20s who
were unaware of the purpose of the experiment participatedin the experiment. All participants provided written informed
consent before the experiment. This experiment was approvedby the institutional review board of Hino Campus, Tokyo
Metropolitan University (H23-11).
Fig. 2. Means and standard errors of (a) skin conductance responses and (b)subjective evaluation.

E. Analysis
The amplitudes of skin conductance response and subjective
evaluation scores were compared across stimulus conditions.
The amplitude of the skin conductance response was deﬁned
as the difference between the value immediately before its
rising and the subsequent local maximum. Both values werestandardized within individuals (z-score). Two-way analysis ofvariance was then applied to them to investigate the effects ofthe preceding vibration and main vibration during the jump
performance.
A male participant was excluded from the analysis of skinconductance because no responses were recorded due to hisskin condition.
III. R ESULTS
Fig. 2 (a) shows the mean and standard errors of thestandardized amplitudes of the skin conductance response foreach stimulus condition. Two-way analysis of variance for skinconductance responses indicated the main effect of preceding
vibration (F (1, 44) = 16.1, p < 0.001) and the main effect ofthe main vibration (F (1, 44) = 20.61, p < 0.001). No interaction between the two main effects was found (F (1, 44) = 0.01,
p = 0.92).
Fig. 2 (b) shows the mean and standard errors of thestandardized subjective evaluation scores for each stimulus
condition. Two-way analysis of variance for the subjective
evaluation scores indicated the main effect of vibration atjump performance scenes (F (1, 52) = 32.1, p < 0.01). There
was no main effect of preceding vibration (F (1, 52) = 0.23,
p = 0.64), and no interaction between the two factors were
found (F (1, 52) = 1.14, p = 0.29).

IV. D ISCUSSION
The effect of preceding vibratory stimuli given before theemotionally arousing jump performance scene in the ﬁgureskating videos increased the amplitude of the skin conductance
response during the jump performance scene; however, noeffect was found in the participants’ subjective reports, andthe effect of the preceding vibration on their emotions wasinconclusive. On the other hand, the main vibration at thejump performance scene exhibited a clear effect on the skinconductance response and sense of excitement. An earlier
study using horror videos [6] showed the effects of preceding
vibratory stimuli on subjective fear but such effects were
not conﬁrmed in this study using ﬁgure skating videos. The
reasons for this discrepancy are unclear. The intervals between
the advance and main vibrations were different between thisstudy and [6], which makes it difﬁcult to directly compare
the results of the two studies. Previous studies have rarely
used preceding vibration, and their design methods have yetto be established. It is possible that we would reach different
conclusions after redesigning the preceding vibration.
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