True? False? What do you think? Seriously, we’re asking for your opinion here, so fire away.
by Alison Flood
As Arya Stark watches from the crowd, tears streaming, King Joffrey toys with her father Ned Stark before executing him in front of a baying crowd. This scene from Game of Thrones is harrowing in any medium – but a new University College London study has found that audiobooks are more “emotionally engaging” than film and television adaptations.
UCL, in collaboration with audiobook giant Audible, measured the physical reactions of 102 participants aged between 18 and 67 to audio and video depictions of scenes from books including A Game of Thrones, The Girl on the Train and Great Expectations. The scenes were chosen based on their “emotional intensity”, and for having minimal differences between the audio and video adaptations. For Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, participants were shown or played Clarice’s interview with Dr Hannibal Lecter; in Pride and Prejudice, they witnessed Mr Darcy’s successful proposal to Elizabeth Bennet; and in The Hound of the Baskervilles, they heard and saw the first description of the beast.
