How Interesting Is This To You: Rating the Interestingness of Auditory Clips
Abstract
Modern technological environments integrate multiple devices, competing for limited attentional resources of users. In Horrey et al. (2017), it was demonstrated that highly engaging stimuli slowed braking speeds compared to both the absence of stimuli and less engaging stimuli. This study plans to validate the auditory stimuli with a college student population and examine the psychological structure of task engagement. 40 students will listen to 39 auditory stimuli used in Horrey et al. (2017) for their level of engagement. Participants will rate how interesting they find the material on a slider from -7 (boring) to 7 (interesting) while listening to each clip. After, participants will complete a questionnaire asking the difficulty, enjoyment, and likelihood to attend to each stimuli. It is expected that the high engagement group will be rated as more interesting than the low engagement group. This study will also explore predictors of task engagement using multiple linear regression.