Pupil Size Variation Related to Oral Report of Affective Pictures

AbstractThe goal of the experiment was to establish pupil size variations while viewing and reporting 48 affective (IAPS) pictur es. The experiment consisted of 44 students. Pictures appeared on the screen for 20 secs in random order. After reporting the SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin), the participants orally reported on the pictures. In the phase of picture viewing, the unpleasant pictures revealed larger pupillary responses than neutral and pleasant pictures (p<.001). The mean pupil size was at its great est also during the reporting of unpleasant pictures (p< .001). Results indicated that the differences in pupil size variations endure from the viewing phase to the reporting phase of pictures

Rapid Brain Responses to Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Music – an EEG and Pupillometry study

Human listeners exhibit marked sensitivity to familiar music, perhaps most readily revealed by popular “name that tune” games, in which listeners often succeed in recognizing a familiar song based on extremely brief presentation. In this work, we used electroencephalography (EEG) and pupillometry to reveal the temporal signatures of the brain processes that allow differentiation between a familiar, well liked, and unfamiliar piece of music. In contrast to previous work, which has quantified gradual changes in pupil diameter (the so-called “pupil dilation response”), here we focus on the occurrence of pupil dilation events. This approach is substantially more sensitive in the temporal domain and allowed us to tap early activity with the putative salience network. Participants (N = 10) passively listened to snippets (750 ms) of a familiar, personally relevant and, an acoustically matched, unfamiliar song, presented in random order. A group of control participants (N = 12), who were unfamiliar with all of the songs, was also tested. We reveal a rapid differentiation between snippets from familiar and unfamiliar songs: Pupil responses showed greater dilation rate to familiar music from 100–300 ms post-stimulus-onset, consistent with a faster activation of the autonomic salience network. Brain responses measured with EEG showed a later differentiation between familiar and unfamiliar music from 350 ms post onset. Remarkably, the cluster pattern identified in the EEG response is very similar to that commonly found in the classic old/new memory retrieval paradigms, suggesting that the recognition of brief, randomly presented, music snippets, draws on similar processes

Psychophysiological Indicators of Multisensory Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development: A Pupillometry Study

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social communication and interactions (APA, 2013). Pupillary responses are a reliable indicator of cognitive operations including preference, mental load, and emotional arousal. The current study utilized pupillary responses to dynamic, audio-visual stimuli to infer cognitive processes involved in perception of social and non-social stimuli, as well as to temporally manipulated (i.e., asynchronous auditory and visual presentations) stimuli. The current study had four main research objectives: 1) to characterize pupillary responses to social and non-social information in ASD and typical development (TD), 2) to characterize responses to asynchronous and synchronous audio-visual stimuli in ASD and TD, 3) to determine whether pupillary responses can accurately predict membership to the ASD or TD group, and 4) to understand the relationship between pupillary responses and measures of ASD symptoms and social factors. Chronological and mental age-matched participants included 39 children with ASD and 32 typically developing children. Pupillary responses to social (Social-Linguistic, Social Non-Linguistic, and Social-Emotional) and non-social (Non-Social, Non-Linguistic) conditions were captured and recorded using an eye-tracker. Results yielded several key findings indicating differences between groups: 1) individuals with ASD demonstrated an attenuated pupillary response to social information, but not to non-social information, 2) in ASD, a reduction in pupillary response to social information was associated with greater impairments in social abilities and sensory processing as rated by caregivers, and 3) pupillary responses to social information was used to reliably predict group membership for children with ASD. Finally, this study did not observe between group differences in temporal processing, rather, both groups showed greater pupillary response to audio-leading asynchronous conditions, except for social-emotional conditions in which there was a significantly greater response to synchronous presentations. Results are discussed within the context of the engagement/arousal hypothesis of pupil dilation and the social motivation theory of ASD. Results are interpreted as evidence that reduced orienting to and under-engagement with social stimuli are implicated in the social impairments observed in ASD. This study demonstrates the usefulness and feasibility of pupillary response as a possible identification tool of the atypical social processing observed in ASD

The Effect of Feedback on Web Site Delay: A Perceptual and Physiological Study

Web site delays are often unavoidable and have consistently been a major complaint of users online. Feedback can be provided to help alleviate users’ frustrations with delay. Two theories of time estimation—the internal clock theory and the attentional gate theory—are compared to determine how feedback may impact users’ estimations of delay length. Attentional and uncertainty reduction perspectives are then utilized to establish how feedback can influence perceived acceptability of a delay as well as satisfaction with and intention to return to a Web site. An experiment was conducted using a simulated online bookstore and search task. Perceptual data were collected using a questionnaire, and physiological data were collected using eye tracking equipment. Results of the analysis suggest that providing feedback does not affect estimations of delay but does increase perceived acceptability of the delay, satisfaction with the site, and intention to return to the site

Emotion induction through virtual avatars and its impact on reasoning: evidence from autonomous nervous system measurements and cognitive assessment

Many studies have shown the impact of emotion on cognition (Damasio 1995; Phelps 2004), however these influences remain ambiguous. The contradictions may be explained by a lack of experimental control but also by the existence of complex cross-influences between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a major substratum of the executive functions (EFs) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area strongly connected to the limbic system (Simpson 2001a). This work aims at gaining a more precise view of the links between emotion and EFs thanks to an experimental protocol that uses Virtual Reality (avatars) for a controlled emotional conditioning, measurements of the autonomous nervous system (ANS) as evidence of the emotional variations and a neuropsychological test battery for the detection of EFs variations, especially reasoning. The battery’s major tasks consist in deductive reasoning and reasoning in dynamic situations. The experimental data show that positive conditioning leads to a performance decrease (in agreement with Phillips et al. (2002a)), together with physiological variations (cardiac and pupillary activity). Moreover negative conditioning leads to ineffective actions: more actions (Dynamic task), more quickly (Deductive task) with no performance variation. These results may have applications in neuropsychology, for the assessment and the rehabilitation of patients (Mateer et al. 2005) and in neuroergonomics in the field of complex working situations where emotions may cause accidents (e.g. potential source of air crashes, Dehais et al. 2003)

The Eyes Never Lie: The Use of Eyetracking Data in HCI Research

Recent technology developments have made eye-tracking systems more affordable and less cumbersome. Many members of the HCI community will therefore consider employing this method in usability research and assessment. This paper, provides an overview of the eye movement data that can be collected, what is involved in analysing them, and what it can add to current HCI research and usability assessment practice. We argue that, whilst much work is required to develop the use of eyetracking as a practitioner’s method, it can provide valuable objective data about the impact of visual design on human performance. To illustrate this point, some preliminary results of a study into web page usage are reported. The results are examined with regard to explaining task performance, user physiology as well as in the assessment of the difficulties and the potential behind eye-tracking

Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation

Development of Social Exclusion Detection: Behavioral and Physiological Correlates

The present work aimed to directly test the theoretical claims about how we as human detect social exclusion using both physiological and behavioral methods across different life stages. Because feeling excluded from a group is a common human experience that starts in early childhood, this basic human need to belong or connect with others is argued to be universal and thought to have an evolutionary basis. In fact, it has been argued that the ability to detect being excluded may be present from birth and detecting exclusion occurs rapidly with little cognitive processing. Study 1 tested whether this rapid detection of exclusion is reflected in pupil dilation and how discerning this signal is of the social nature of exclusion. Study 2 tested how social exclusion detection emerges across the preschool years using both verbal and nonverbal measures. Findings from Study 1 indicate that greater pupil dilation occurs when viewing exclusive individuals compared to inclusive individuals, regardless of whether participants were excluded by human players or non-human computerized players. Furthermore, pupil dilation occurred even when viewing third-party social exclusion, suggesting pupil dilation was sensitive to even exclusion that participants did not necessarily experience themselves. The magnitude of pupil dilation to exclusion was not correlated to self-reported distress levels or individual differences in rejection sensitivity. The present study is the first to show that social pain response — as indexed by pupil dilation — occurs even in non-social interactions and is not limited to first-hand experiences. This result supports the hypothesized “quick” and “crude” ostracism detection system: physiological arousal to exclusion appears to be independent of the social nature of exclusion. Thus, social pain from exclusion appears to reflect the high sensitivity to detect any instances of exclusion. Findings from Study 2 indicate that that even 3-year-old children could detect social exclusion, but their ability to detect and respond to social exclusion improves with age. Strikingly, children were able to detect social exclusion occurred regardless of whether exclusion was verbally communicated (explicit) or nonverbally communicated (implicit). Furthermore, contrary to expectations from previous research on social cognitive reasoning in infancy, young children’s nonverbal responses (i.e., preferences and sharing behavior) did not necessarily reflect detection of exclusion at an earlier age than their verbal responses. Children’s preferences closely matched their verbal distinction of exclusive and inclusive agents and both preferences and verbal reasoning appeared to mature at a similar rate across development. Such finding suggests that children show remarkably early emerging ability to notice when one is left out. Taken together, the present body of work clarified the physiological component behind ostracism detection and the developmental trajectory of social exclusion detection in early childhood. Findings from this work have important methodological implications for the field of developmental social cognition as well as practical and clinical implications of bullying and atypical social development

Affective responses as guides to category-based inferences

Initial nonconscious affective reactions to a target individual may influence a perceiver's selection from among descriptively plausible categories with which to organize his impression of the target. Specifically, a perceiver may be more likely to employ a category that is consistent, in affective tone, with the tone of his affective reaction. Subjects in two studies were exposed to photographs of faces of target individuals. Degree of preference for the faces was manipulated, outside of subjects' awareness, by varying the state of pupillary dilation. Participants in Study One reported that verbal descriptions that characterized positively (compared to negatively) evaluated category prototypes were more likely to be descriptive of targets with dilated pupils. Similarly, participants judged descriptions that characterized negatively (compared to positively) evaluated prototypes as more likely to be descriptive of targets with constricted pupils. In Study Two, subjects' recall of personality descriptions that were (evaluatively) inconsistent with their initial affective response to the target was superior to their recall of descriptions that were (evaluatively) consistent with the tone of their initial response. The data are interpreted as evidence for the importance of nonconscious affective reactions in guiding the process of impression formation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45360/1/11031_2004_Article_BF00992317.pd