Brain activity patterns induced by interrupting the cognitive processes with online advertising

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Online advertising increasingly uses intrusive techniques to capture user attention.
• Advertisements often interrupt users during essential online tasks, affecting cognitive processes.
• Previous research relied on simulated environments or self-reported data, lacking real-time insights.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the direct impact of intrusive online advertisements on web users' cognitive processes.
• To identify specific brain activity patterns associated with cognitive interruptions caused by advertisements.
• To analyze the consistency and correlation of these brain patterns within and across subjects.

Main Methods:

• An experiment was designed to monitor brain activity in real-time.
• Participants performed a text-reading task while being exposed to internet advertisements.
• Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to analyze brain activity patterns, focusing on frontal and prefrontal cortical areas.

Main Results:

• A consistent drop in brain activity was observed in the frontal and prefrontal cortical areas across all frequency bands for most subjects.
• Significant changes in the frontal/prefrontal asymmetry index were detected, indicating altered cognitive states.
• Individual brain activity patterns related to ad interruptions were identified and analyzed for consistency.

Conclusions:

• Direct brain activity monitoring offers a more objective measure of cognitive interruption effects than traditional methods.
• Intrusive online advertisements demonstrably alter brain activity, particularly in executive function-related areas.
• Understanding these neural patterns can inform the design of less disruptive and more effective online advertising strategies.