Dr Giulia Poerio (an established ASMR researcher) is the Lead supervisor for this position at the Department of Psychology, University of Essex, UK.
This is an exciting opportunity for a young scientist interested in being a pioneer of ASMR research.
I’ve copied and pasted a lot of details below from the position posting; such as, criteria, funding, application deadline, start date, duration, project overview, and a link to apply.
Denisa Vondruskova recently received her Bachelor’s Degree from Palacky University in the Czech Republic.
For her Bachelor’s Thesis she completed a research project titled, “ASMR and Jacobson progressive muscle relaxation.”
Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a technique developed by Dr Edmund Jacobson, hence it is also called, “Jacobson progressive muscle relaxation.” PMR involves tensing and un-tensing muscle groups, progressing from the upper torso to the lower torso.
Both ASMR and PMR can help someone to reduce their stress and fall asleep more easily. However, ASMR involves a passive process (passive exposure to gentle stimuli) and PMR involves an active process (active tensing and untensing of muscles).
Denisa may be the first researcher to compare the relaxation techniques and effects of ASMR and PMR.
Below is a summary of her methods and findings, followed by a link to an English summary of her thesis and a link to a full version of her thesis in the Czech language.
Jemma Frost and Safiyya Mank are undergraduate psychology students at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England.
Their dissertation project is titled, “An investigation into ASMR immunity” and they are seeking participants who are 18 years or older for this study (eligible participants must have experienced ASMR and immunity to ASMR).
Participants will access an online survey, watch an ASMR video, and answer questions about their ability to experience ASMR and their experiences of ASMR immunity.
Damiana Conti is a graduate student pursuing her Masters of Science degree in the Department of Psychology at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy.
She focused her dissertation project on analyzing the subjective feelings and objective skin conductance responses to ASMR videos.
An increase in skin conductance is a measure of increased physiological arousal, like excitement or alertness. ASMR is usually thought of as a state of relaxation with decreased arousal, although there are several reports that suggest ASMR has a slight increased level of physiological arousal to it.
Below are a summary of her methods, some of her exciting data, and a link to her completed dissertation.
Emma Palmer-Cooper is a Researcher at the University of Southampton in the UK.
She is conducting a research project titled, “Unusual experiences and the association with metacognition.” This study includes unusual experiences such as ASMR.
Emma is looking for participants to take her online survey, which has been reviewed and approved by an Ethics Committee.
The survey is open to individuals who watch ASMR videos, are over 18 years of age, and have no personal or family history of psychosis.
The ASMR artist, Deni ASMRCZ, recently asked me if whispering is bad for the throat or vocal cords.
A 2006 research article stated, “For years, otolaryngologists and voice therapists have warned voice patients that whispering causes more trauma to the larynx than normal speech. However, no large series of patients has ever been examined fiberoptically during whispering to test this hypothesis.”
In 2011, The New York Times asked Dr. Robert T. Sataloff, chairman of the otolaryngology department at Drexel University College of Medicine why clinicians recommend that patients avoid whispering. He said this recommendation was based on “years of pronouncement and almost no research, like so much in medicine.”
Even when searching for more recent research publications, there doesn’t seem to be any research studies which clearly answer this question yet, but there are personal experiences, clinical opinions, and physiological studies.
I’ll cover all three of these types of sources, and then I conclude this article with links to resources about tips, remedies, and clinical procedures for treating vocal strain.
Let’s begin in 2009 with the first ASMR artist, WhisperingLife. She mentioned in some of her videos that whispering sometimes hurt her voice. This may have been one of the reasons her videos were relatively short and averaged about 10 minutes long.
Jump forward to 2019. I’ve created over 200 podcast episodes for the Sleep Whispers podcast of pure whispering, with an average length of 40 minutes each and a max length of 90 minutes. I’ve never felt any discomfort in my throat or voice, but I do often feel like I am running out of breath.
So these two simple and personal examples highlight that whispering may create different types of discomfort for different individuals.
Let’s see what further evidence I can uncover for the effect of whispering on the throat and vocals.
Safiyya Mank is an undergraduate psychology student at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England and also a research assistant for an ASMR project.
Her project is titled, “An investigation into ASMR and sensory sensitivity” and she is seeking participants who are 18 years or older for this study (sensitivity to ASMR triggers is not necessary).
Participants will access an online survey, watch an ASMR video, and answer questions about their ability to experience ASMR and how they normally react to specific sensory stimuli.
The survey has been approved by the University’s ethics committee, shouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes, and will collect your replies anonymously.
The results of the study may be published in peer reviewed journals. Participants can obtain a full copy of the results of the research study by contacting the researcher.
She is being supervised by Dr. Thomas Hostler and Dr. Giulia Poerio, who published the first heart rate study about ASMR in 2018.
The survey closes soon, so click the link below to learn more or to participate if you are interested.
Lucas Simone is a junior at Willow Glen High School in San Jose, California.
For his AP Capstone Research Project, he chose to analyze the associations between gender and aspects of ASMR.
He surveyed over a hundred of his high school peers and collected data about gender, stress, ASMR video viewing, ASMR feelings, ASMR frequency, and more.
Below are a summary of his methods, some of his data, and a link to his final AP Capstone Research Report.
Alexsandra Kovacevich and David Huron at Ohio State University have published a research paper about the content and comments of ASMR videos.
Their paper is titled, “Two Studies of ASMR: The Relationship between ASMR and Music-Induced Frisson” and was published in Fall 2018 in the peer-reviewed journal, Empirical Musicology Review.
In this paper, the authors report the results of two studies. The first study analyzed the content of ASMR videos and the second study analyzed comments about ASMR videos.
Below is a summary of their paper, followed by links to the published manuscript, supplementary materials, and a commentary article.
Toloue Askarirad is a graduate student in the School of Psychology at The University of Adelaide in Australia.
Her research thesis is exploring an association between intelligence, personality traits, and ASMR, and is titled, “Do intelligence and personality traits influence ASMR perception?”
Toloue is looking for participants to take her online survey, which has been reviewed and approved by a Human Research Ethics Subcommittee. The faculty supervisor of her project is Professor Nick Burns.
The survey is open to individuals who watch ASMR videos, is fully anonymous, will not take longer than 40 minutes, and the results will only be used for academic purposes.
The survey will remain open until 200 participants have participated (or until June 30th, 2019).
Below is a link to the survey and more information.
