Factors that Influence the Memory of Entertainment Experiences

DOI: 10.5176/978-981-08-7656-2ATAI2010-66

Authors: Shenglan Kang and Alexander Nareyek

Abstract:

When generating an entertainment experience, such asthat of a movie, a novel, or a computer game, not only the experienceitself, but also the memory of the experience plays an important role.Pleasurable memories can generate additional pleasure during recall,be instrumental to generate secondary social pleasure whencommunicating the experience, and be important for word-of-mouthadvertising of the entertainment product. In order to optimizeentertainment experiences, especially for an online dynamicgeneration of experiences within computer games, we need to buildformal models of these processes. This paper is a summary of aresearch study we conducted with 50 university students in order toidentify factors that influence the memory of entertainmentexperiences. Our findings show that when watching a short film, arange of factors, including the level of attention of the person, thepredictability of the storyline, and the valence of the content, all havesubstantial impact on the amount of information the test subject canrecollect at a later stage. Psychophysiological measurements likeskin conductance are also found to be indicators of the memoryperformance. In terms of the application of the results, some of thefactors suggest the use of profiling techniques to best match the target audience's background, e.g., when used for automated storygeneration within a game.