The Journal of Advertising (JA), a leading peer-reviewed journal in communication, published an online version of a study conducted by Distinguished & Endowed McKenzie Professor and Founding Director of the Cognition and Emotion Lab (CEL) in the School of Communication (SCOM), Dr. Russell B. Clayton, and his co-author, Dr. Jessica Gall Myrick, on June 27, 2025.

The study, “‘What Can the Heart Tell Us About Thinking’ A Three-Decade Review of Heart Rate Measurement and Its Future Applications to Advertising Research,” features a review of three decades of research on audience cognitive responses to advertisements through heart rate measurements.

“We aimed to make the article one that can be used in the classroom for undergraduate and graduate students and for researchers interested in incorporating biometric measures like heart rate in their advertising research studies,” Clayton said.

Clayton and Myrick’s article will also appear later this year in a special issue, “Contributions of Biometrics to Advertising Research.”

“We talk about a mix of theory, differing definitions of key terms related to cognitive processing, shifts in statistical approaches to analyzing heart rate data, modern measurement tools, and the importance of taking care in measuring and interpreting heart rate in advertising studies,” Clayton said.

As director of the CEL, Clayton, alongside his team of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, utilizes a variety of biometric measures, including heart rate, skin conductance, facial electromyography, and eye-tracking, to examine audiences’ cognitive and emotional responses to media.