At the Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap in Tilburg (January 2017), Dr. Karin Fikkers and Dr .Bert Bakker organized a preconference on behalf of the Media Psychology division, which focused on the use of psychophysiological measures in communication research. Six presentations by researchers from different universities in Flanders and the Netherlands presented a diverse range of work, showcasing and explaining measures such as skin conductance, heart rate, electromyography (facial muscle movement), EEG, and vocal characteristics as indicator of patient stress (see below for speakers and presentation titles).
It was an inspiring morning that offered presenters and public a taste of what it means to work with psychophysiological measures.

In order to make this preconference even more useful to all participants,  Karin and Bert have started a website on the Open Science Framework where those who are interested can find a list of useful resources about psychophysiological work.  In addition, the six presentations are available via this website.  If you would like to learn more about the preconference or its topic, please reach out to Karin or Bert.

Speakers & Topics:
1. On the start-up of a neuro lab: from Facereader to EEG studies & beyond (Prof. dr. Iris Vermeir & Prof. dr. Hendrik Slabbinck, Department of Marketing Ghent University)
2. Economic messages alter the brain’s response to error prediction and consequent behavioral decisions (Diamantis Petropoulos-Petalas, MSc., PhD candidate at the Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen; in collaboration with Dr. Hein van Schie and Dr. Paul Hendriks Vettehen)
3. Exploring children’s responses to entertainment using heart rate and skin conductance (Dr. Karin Fikkers, Postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam; in collaboration with Dr. Jessica Piotrowski and Prof. Dr. Patti Valkenburg)
4. The relation between skin conductance level and acoustic properties of speech as indicators of stress (Dr. Marie Postma, Assistant Professor at the University of Tilburg)
5. Politics isn’t cool. It is hot! Physiological Responses to Political Communication (Dr. Bert Bakker, Assistant professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam; in collaboration with Dr. Gijs Schumacher and Dr. Matthijs Rooduijn)
6. Automatically measuring facial expressions with FaceReader (Dr. Anouk den Hamer, Business Developer at Noldus Information Technology)