Eye tracking and pupil size variation as response to affective stimuli: A preliminary study

Abstract

Eye Gaze Trackers (EGTs) and pupil size variation are generally developed for scientific investigation in controlled environments or laboratories and data are used in several fields of application such as ophthalmology, neurology, or psychology, with the aim of studying oculomotor characteristics and abnormalities. Very often, the focus of these studies is the identification of cognitive and mental states. This preliminary work aims at investigating if eye tracking and pupil size variation can provide useful cues to discriminate emotional states induced by viewing images at different arousal content. Here we propose a new wearable and wireless EGT, hereinafter called HATCAM, able to robustly enable eye tracking and pupil area detection. Although very preliminary, results are very promising for affective computing applications. © 2011 ICST.