Effects of ASMR on critical thinking in engineering students: insights from EEG studies and chaotic descriptors

Abstract

This research examines the influence of whispers in Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos over critical thinking in undergraduate engineering students. A quantitative method is employed, measuring students’ brainwaves with electroencephalography (EEG) while they watch a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) video featuring whispered narration. Chaotic descriptors, including Lyapunov exponent, fractal dimension, Hurst exponent, and approximate entropy, alongsidemachine learning techniques, are used to classify the EEG signals. The videos contain segments of relevant, irrelevant, and false information, which students are expected to distinguish. Two versions of the video are used: one with whispered narration (ASMR) for the experimental group and another with a normal speaking voice for the control group. It also proposes a new method to study the ASMR phenomenom and how it affects cognition and education, by perfectly defining the used stimuli, producing it and exposing the participants to it in a controlled environment and validating the stimuli by questioning the participants about it.