Multimodal Approach to the Complexity Assessment of Students-Actors’ Projects

Kovaleva, Anastasia Vladimirovna
PhD in Biology, Leading Research Fellow, Head of the Psychophysiology Research Group, the Anokhin Research Institute of Normal Physiology, Physiologist, the Sport Psychology Department, the Sport Center of Innovative Technologies and Teams Exercise Training, Member of the International Organization of Psychophysiology, Moscow, Russia
a.kovaleva@nphys.ru

Kriklenko, Elena Alexandrovna
Physician, Specialist at the Psychophysiology Research Group, the Anokhin Research Institute of Normal Physiology, Moscow, Russia
e.kriklenko@nphys.ru

Abstract
In creative activity, the evaluation of an external observer (spectator or expert) plays a significant role in assessing its effectiveness. For example, an assessment of the actors’ occupation, although it may be based on developed rules and criteria (in the case of an expert assessment by a teacher, a curator of the course, a director), is always highly subjective. In particular, it is important to evaluate the result of creative project’s performing by students. To regard this issue, we use physiological indicators reflecting the degree of student’s psycho-emotional stress when performing is close to real activity. As a model of such activity, it was proposed to read a straight (simple task) and a 180-degree inverted (more complex task) text. As a result of multimodal (polygraphic) registration of a number of physiological indicators (heart rate, electrical brain activity, respiration, skin conductance), sensitive to the subjective complexity of the performed task were identified, and correlations were also obtained between the assessments of the expert (course teacher), effectiveness (number of words per minute) and indicators of the functional bodily state of participants.

Keywords: assessment of the creative activity’s effectiveness, actors’ skills, multimodal approach, physiological indicators