The impact of conversational interaction on users’ cognitive absorption in mobile news reading context: evidence from EEG

From the perspective of the user experience of media products, the study primarily focuses on the influence of users’ interaction mode on cognitive absorption. Specifically, 80 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to different interactive modes: a conversational interactive news interface and a webpage-based interactive news interface. They needed to be recorded with an EEG during the interaction and completion of the cognitive absorption (CA) scale after the interaction. The results demonstrated that there were significant differences in CA between the webpage-based interaction group and the conversational interaction group. Meanwhile, the PSD of theta and delta bands under the conversational interaction group appeared to be significantly higher. Besides, the frontal EEG asymmetry in the conversational interaction group was significantly higher than in the webpage-based interaction group. In contrast, the individual alpha frequency of the webpage-based interaction group was higher than that of the conversational interaction group. These results suggest that conversational interaction reduces the user’s reading difficulty while also reduces the cognitive load in the process of task. This helps improve user’s level of being immersed, enjoyment, sense of control, and curiosity while also improving users’ cognitive absorption as they also exhibit stronger positive emotional experiences.