Eye movement analysis and cognitive assessment: the use of comparative visual search tasks in a non-immersive vr application

Background: An adequate behavioral response depends on attentional and mnesic processes. When these basic cognitive functions are impaired, the use of non-immersive Virtual Reality Applications (VRAs) can be a reliable technique for assessing the level of impairment. However, most non-immersive VRAs use indirect measures to make inferences about visual attention and mnesic processes (e.g., time to task completion, error rate). Objectives: To examine whether the eye movement analysis through eye tracking (ET) can be a reliable method to probe more effectively where and how attention is deployed and how it is linked with visual working memory during comparative visual search tasks (CVSTs) in non-immersive VRAs. Methods: The eye movements of 50 healthy participants were continuously recorded while CVSTs, selected from a set of cognitive tasks in the Systemic Lisbon Battery (SLB). Then a VRA designed to assess of cognitive impairments were randomly presented. Results: The total fixation duration, the number of visits in the areas of interest and in the interstimulus space, along with the total execution time was significantly different as a function of the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores. Conclusions: The present study demonstrates that CVSTs in SLB, when combined with ET, can be a reliable and unobtrusive method for assessing cognitive abilities in healthy individuals, opening it to potential use in clinical samples.info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersio

Affective and physiological correlates of the perception of unimodal and bimodal emotional stimuli

Background: Despite the multisensory nature of perception, previous research on emotions has been focused on unimodal emotional cues with visual stimuli. To the best of our knowledge, there is no evidence on the extent to which incongruent emotional cues from visual and auditory sensory channels affect pupil size. Aims: To investigate the effects of audiovisual emotional information perception on the physiological and affective response, but also to determine the impact of mismatched cues in emotional perception on these physiological indexes. Method: Pupil size, electrodermal activity and affective subjective responses were recorded while 30 participants were exposed to visual and auditory stimuli with varied emotional content in three different experimental conditions: pictures and sounds presented alone (unimodal), emotionally matched audio-visual stimuli (bimodal congruent) and emotionally mismatched audio-visual stimuli (bimodal incongruent). Results: The data revealed no effect of emotional incongruence on physiological and affective responses. On the other hand, pupil size covaried with skin conductance response (SCR), but the subjective experience was partially dissociated from autonomic responses. Conclusion: Emotional stimuli are able to trigger physiological responses regardless of valence, sensory modality or level of emotional congruence.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pupillometric and saccadic measures of affective and executive processing in anxiety

Anxious individuals report hyper-arousal and sensitivity to environmental stimuli, difficulties concentrating, performing tasks efficiently and inhibiting unwanted thoughts and distraction. We used pupillometry and eye-movement measures to compare high vs. low anxious individuals hyper-reactivity to emotional stimuli (facial expressions) and subsequent attentional biases in a memory-guided pro- and antisaccade task during conditions of low and high cognitive load (short vs. long delay). High anxious individuals produced larger and slower pupillary responses to face stimuli, and more erroneous eye-movements particularly following long delay. Low anxious individuals? pupillary responses were sensitive to task demand (reduced during short delay), whereas high anxious individuals' were not. These findings provide evidence in anxiety of enhanced, sustained and inflexible patterns of pupil responding during affective stimulus processing and cognitive load that precede deficits in task performance

Violação masculina versus feminina: efeitos na resposta emocional subjetiva e psicofisiológica numa amostra feminina

Orientação: Joana CarvalhoA violência sexual tornou-se um dilema global da sociedade contemporânea. Revelou-se um crime de género, do qual as mulheres são desproporcionalmente vítimas e os homens maioritariamente os agressores. Tal evidência não anula a veracidade de que os homens também sofrem de vitimização sexual por parte das mulheres. Um dos aspetos pertinentes deste estudo, está relacionado com as elevadas taxas de atrito relativamente aos crimes sexuais, sobretudo quando estes são cometidos por mulheres contra homens. Considerando a pertinência da temática, o presente estudo teve como objetivo primordial contribuir para uma melhor compreensão deste fenómeno. Pretendemos verificar se existiu um efeito de género e do tipo de estímulo (violação contra homem versus violação contra mulher) na resposta emocional subjetiva e psicofisiológica, sendo que para tal avaliámos a dilatação pupilar recorrendo à técnica de Eye Tracking. A presente investigação provém de um estudo mais amplo, contudo a atual dissertação engloba apenas os dados da amostra feminina. Relativamente aos estímulos de violência sexual, as participantes apresentaram significativamente mais nervosismo face à exposição ao filme de violação de homem por uma mulher.Sexual violence has become a global dilemma of contemporary society. It has turned out to be a gender crime, of which women are disproportionately victims and men are mostly aggressors. Such evidence does not negate the veracity that men also suffer from sexual victimization by women. One of the relevant aspects of this study is related to the high rates of attrition in relation to sexual crimes, especially when committed by women against men. Considering the pertinence of the theme, the present study had as main objective to contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon. We intend to verify if there is a gender effect and the type of stimulus (rape against man versus rape against woman) in the subjective and psychophysiological emotional response, and for this we evaluated the pupil dilation using the technique of Eye Tracking. The present investigation comes from a larger study, however the present dissertation only includes data from the female sample. Concerning sexual violence stimuli, the participants were significantly more nervous about exposure to the film of a man's rape by a woman

¿Qué dicen sus ojos? Conectando los movimientos oculares hacia el comportamiento del consumidor

Eye tracking (ET) is a technique that has been progressively employed to study the influence of visual stimuli on attentional processes and consumer behavior. The goals of the present theoretical article are fourfold and are based on an extensive literature revision. First, a brief historical review of ET methodology is introduced, presenting the evolution of ET techniques from the ancient proto-eye trackers to the "fresh" state-of-the-art eye ET devices. Second, the basics of ET are clarified through a simplified technical and mathematical explanation. Third, the triad eye movement-attention-consumer behavior is made clear, grounded on attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) theoretical model. Fourth, the most used oculometrics in marketing studies are explained and distinguished The present article addresses a number of technical and methodological issues by discussing challenges involved in ET systems and giving some guidelines for those who intend to apply ET to infer cognitive and emotional processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Adaptive Non-Immersive VR Environment for Eliciting Fear of Cockroaches: A Physiology-Driven Approach Combined with 3D-TV Exposure

Non-immersive VR environments are related to the least interactive application of VR techniques, such that interaction with the VR environment can occur commonly by 3D-TV without full immersion into the environment. This study presents how 3D-TV exposure combined with physiology recording can elicit fear of cockroaches among individuals with different levels of fear. Thirty-six participants, set apart into three fear groups (low vs. moderate vs. high), were exposed to VR environment with cockroaches for 4 minutes while recording and using cardiac activity as input to the VR environment. Results revealed significant effects on self-report measures and heart rate between different fear groups. Moreover, participants with higher levels of fear were more likely to trigger cockroaches into the scenario due to their cardiac acceleration. Overall results suggest that our physiology-driven VR environment is valid for fear elicitation while having potential use in therapeutic domain

Pupil dilation reflects the authenticity of received nonverbal vocalizations

The ability to infer the authenticity of other’s emotional expressions is a social cognitive process taking place in all human interactions. Although the neurocognitive correlates of authenticity recognition have been probed, its potential recruitment of the peripheral autonomic nervous system is not known. In this work, we asked participants to rate the authenticity of authentic and acted laughs and cries, while simultaneously recording their pupil size, taken as proxy of cognitive effort and arousal. We report, for the first time, that acted laughs elicited higher pupil dilation than authentic ones and, reversely, authentic cries elicited higher pupil dilation than acted ones. We tentatively suggest the lack of authenticity in others’ laughs elicits increased pupil dilation through demanding higher cognitive effort; and that, reversely, authenticity in cries increases pupil dilation, through eliciting higher emotional arousal. We also show authentic vocalizations and laughs (i.e. main effects of authenticity and emotion) to be perceived as more authentic, arousing and contagious than acted vocalizations and cries, respectively. In conclusion, we show new evidence that the recognition of emotional authenticity can be manifested at the level of the autonomic nervous system in humans. Notwithstanding, given its novelty, further independent research is warranted to ascertain its psychological meaning

Beyond traditional clinical measurements for screening fears and phobias

The use of eye movements is a usual method of measuring attentional and emotional response in laboratory. However, when it comes to clinical practice, it is seldom applied. Two studies were conducted to examine whether extraocular and intraocular movements can be used as indices of attentional bias and autonomic activation. In the first study, a free-viewing task, combined with subliminal exposure, showed that high-fear individuals tend to orient more their attention toward the visual space where threat-stimuli (snakes) were presented. The findings suggest a reflexive overt attentional orienting bias for subliminal snakes in comparison with subliminal control stimuli. The differentiation between participants with high and low fear of snakes suggested that a disposition to fear snakes affects the initial ocular saccades. In the second study, participants were instructed to discriminate a sign that was randomly displayed at the center of the display while subliminal images were peripherally presented. The results revealed larger pupil dilation for threatening stimuli subliminally presented; again, high-fear individuals showed larger pupillary dilations, independently of the stimulus category. Our results are in line with the assumption that a predisposition to fear is relevant for extraocular and intraocular movements when exposed to threat stimuli. These findings suggest that eye measurements, combined with subliminal exposure techniques, could be a reliable and nonintrusive aid tool to be used for the assessment and treatment of fear and phobias.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio