Young professor sees eye-tracking the future of USD's CoMPARE lab

One thing Assistant Professor Brandon Nutting has done that most 30 year olds haven't: stuck electrodes to people's heads.

Nutting is one of two faculty members from the Media & Journalism department that began the Communication, Media Psychology and Related Effects research (CoMPARE) lab more than two years ago.

The program, which includes at least nine undergraduate, graduate and doctoral student volunteers, works on multiple projects to collect physiological responses to media by the placement of censors on a person to determine involuntary measurements.

“The hope is to bring in more money to the department so we can keep building our facilities and the graduate program,” he said.

Nutting was initially recruited as a doctoral student from Texas Tech to join Associate Professor Miglena Sternadori at USD to initiate the media lab. Only about nine universities in the nation offer such a program.

"It had to take something special to get me to move to Texas," he said. 













Funding for the lab's equipment began with support from the Media & Journalism department and South Dakota Public Radio. The lab is self-sustaining now that it is set-up, said Nutting. New supplies will not be needed for the next two years, but the next major purchase for the researchers could be eye-tracking equipment.

Nutting said he hopes that as the lab grows, so will the number of regional and national contracts that the university will join. A recent lab contract includes a project with the South Dakota Comprehensive Cancer Control Program that would work to create a comprehensive website to increase the number of people who pursue clinical trials for cancer. 


Here's a look at what other programs around the country are doing:


Texas Tech University: The physiological measurement lab is an experimental laboratory for 

measuring psychophysiological responses to media messages, such as television commercials, video games or Internet applications. The Center for Communication Research (CCR) houses state-of-the art technology for studying all facets of audience response to media messages — video, audio, online, commercial, informational and more. The center contains more than 6,000 square feet of research labs and provides research services to those both within and beyond the Texas Tech community.


Stanford University: The Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory is a research laboratory designed for the study of emotion and emotion regulation. Some recent studies includes a project that works to understand the physiological, behavioral and experiential consequences of important emotion regulation strategies such as expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal, and rumination. There is also work being done to design a way to teach sixth- and seventh-graders a growth mindset of emotion regulation and give them emotion regulation strategies, with the goal of improving academic performance. 


University of Washington: The Psychophysiology and Behavioral Systems Lab (PBS LAB) at the University of Washington conducts state-of-the-art research into the etiology, course and treatment of development with the media. Recent research has focused on eye-tracking technology and using these results for several national contracts it has with ad agencies around the country. 

University of Missouri-Columbia: The PRIME (Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects) Lab is both a research and teaching laboratory devoted to the study of how different features of media affect the way people think, feel, and act. They conduct theory-driven, empirical research using psychophysiology and other behavioral science methods. One of their two main projects is monitoring the emotional responses to common online activities. Participants in the experiment use Facebook, Amazon.com and CNN.com. Heart rate, skin conductance and facial electromyography data were recorded and synchronized with a video record of each participants' activities. The goal of this study is to explore the motivation of different content changes online.


Pennsylvania State University:  The Media Effects Research Laboratory has two main wings. There is the Traditional Media wing, which examines the effects of television, film entertainment and video games. The other group is the New Media Wing, which examines the effects of online media and communications technology.

Check out a tour of USD's psychology-physiology lab below.