Dancing with words: the emotional reception of creative audio description in contemporary dance

Recent advancements in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS) have spurred a surge in experimental research, particularly in Audio Description (AD) studies. This shift has aimed to deepen the understanding of the cognitive processes involved in both the creation of AD and its reception by visually impaired users. Research has focused on the reception of various AD types and styles, examining factors such as language type, voice, and intonation. However, most experimental studies have concentrated on AD for film. Addressing this gap, the current study introduces an experiment that investigates the cognitive and emotional effects of different AD styles in the context of contemporary dance within the performing arts. Thirty-three visually impaired participants listened to four 5-minute contemporary dance pieces with AD (2 with a descriptive version of the AD vs. 2 with a creative version of the AD). We implemented a within-subject design to control for inter-subject variability. Both self-report and physiological methods were used to measure AD reception, which involved the cognitive effort invested by visually impaired users (cardiac deceleration and self-reported effort), the pleasantness experienced (electrodermal activity and self-reported valence, arousal, sense of presence, engagement, and satisfaction), and their ability to recall AD details (a post-task tailor-made questionnaire). Although participants reported a preference for the creative version over the descriptive one, self-report measures and physiological data revealed that the emotional responses elicited by creative clips were experienced negatively. This discrepancy between retrospective interviews and momentary biomarkers of emotional experience highlights the significance of users’ familiarity with the type of AD.