When faces don’t lie. Physiology and facial expressions in the reception of audio described porn

Abstract

In the last decades, Cognitive Translation Studies (CTIS) have witnessed agrowing expansion of Audio Description (AD), with emphasis onexperimental studies examining the psychological factors that influence thecreation and reception of AD. While most studies have focused on thecreation phase of AD, recent reception research has explored emotions,immersion, and presence in the context of AD. A study by Rojo etal. (2021)investigated the impact of AD on the reception of porn, comparing thepsychophysiological response of sighted participants watching audiovisualcontent with blind and sighted participants listening to AD without images.The results indicated no significant differences in physiological andsubjective responses. The present study aims at providing further evidenceon the participants’ emotional response by analyzing their facial expressionsusing the FaceReader software (Noldus Information Technology). Unlikecardiac and cortisol responses, the analysis of the participants’ facialexpressions reveals some intriguing differences between the groups thatpoint to some emotional differences in the reception of porn