Jennifer DiCorcia, Psychology

Jennifer DiCorcia

It's a summer afternoon and a movie theater in Salem, Massachusetts, is packed with children and their parents taking in the latest Disney/Pixar offering, Ratatouille. On the screen, Remy, a Parisian rat with culinary aspirations, finds himself trapped in the kitchen of a Paris restaurant. In his efforts to reach an open window, Remy dodges food carts and the footsteps of cooks who walk by, is pitched across the room after a door is swung open, and manages to free himself, just in time, from an oven after mistakenly being included in one of the dishes. While all of this is happening, the children in the audience are having mixed reactions. Some are smiling and staring wide-eyed at the screen while others are looking away from it. The reactions of these children, at least on the surface, seem obvious-some of them are enjoying the scene while others are afraid.

But there may be something else going on with the children, and this deeper level is what Jennifer DiCorcia, a psychology graduate student, is currently researching.

"I'm interested in learning how children are affected by their favorite movies," says DiCorcia, who is conducting this research with her advisor, assistant psychology professor Heather Urry. "For example, children might report feeling sad when Bambi's mother dies or scared when Prince Charming fights off the horrible dragon, but what are they experiencing on a physiological level? Will we notice the same changes in heart rate patterns and skin conductance that we see in adults? Or will we observe the reverse? Maybe children will not verbally report their sadness or fear, and instead we'll notice these responses on a physiological level."

DiCorcia assesses this by showing individual study participants a series of clips from popular children's movies. The clips fall into three categories: "happy" (Nemo riding the current with the tortoises in Finding Nemo) "scary" (the final fight scene between Simba and Scar in The Lion King), or "sad" (Sulley saying goodbye to Boo in Monsters, Inc.). While the children, who range in age from 4 1/2 to 6 1/2 years old, are watching the clips, DiCorcia is measuring their heart rates and skin conductance using skin conductance sensors attached to their fingertips and EKG sensors similar to those found in infant neonatal care centers. In between clips, each child is asked to comment on whether, for example, a sad scene made him or her "very sad," "a little bit sad," or "not sad at all."

DiCorcia with one of the children involved in her study.

"One of the things that I really like about this study is that it adds this subconscious recording of what the body is experiencing," says DiCorcia, whose research is supported by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and School of Engineering Graduate Student Research Fund.

DiCorcia is also exploring how children process their emotions while watching movies.

"I want to know if when kids are watching The Lion King, they are concentrating on the next scene, where characters are singing and having a great time, or if they are still kind of focusing on what happened to Simba's dad (who is killed in the previous scene)," she says. "Are they asking themselves, 'Hey, where's Simba's dad? How come he's not here?' or have they been able to use the positive scene that follows to sort of undo the negative one that happened before?"

While DiCorcia's research is in its early stages, she hopes her future findings will help children and adults alike.

"If we are able to show that children, while watching movies, are able to replace a negative emotion with a positive one, then maybe we can help kids in a variety of environments," she says. "When you think about it, when children are in their home environment they see their parents get stressed but they often don't see the relaxation stages. So we hope our findings will help kids get more in touch with their feelings and be able to talk through their emotions with their parents."

This article originally appeared in the fall 2007 issue of Alma Matters Magazine, the publication for arts, sciences, and engineering graduate alumni.

Photo by Alonso Nichols