Assessing the Appeal Power of Narrative Performance by using Eyeblink Synchronization among Audience

In this chapter, the authors showed that eyeblink synchronization enables researchers to investigate the appeal power of narrative performance empirically. The proposed method relies on the ability of audience members as epistemic agents to recognize and understand the performance. As spontaneous eyeblinks loosely co-vary with individual's allocation and release of attentions, the timings of eyeblinks could be entrained by the details of narrative performances as the common inputs. Thus, the standard basis accumulated by the collective eyeblink responses enables experimenter to judge whether or not a particular performance contains universal appeal to sense-making. Here, the authors introduced that the empirical studies to assess the appeal power of Rakugo (a traditional narrative performance). An expert artist, compared to a novice performer, created implicit breakpoints on participants' attentional process. It were discussed that the applicable scopes of the eyeblink relevant indices, upcoming research on eyeblink synchronization, and new research on human collective behaviors.