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Eye gaze patterns in emotional pictures

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Abstract

This paper reports on a preliminary study aiming at investigating the eye gaze pattern and pupil size variation to discriminate emotional states induced by looking at pictures having different arousal content. A wearable and wireless eye gaze tracking system, hereinafter called HATCAM, which was able to robustly detect eye tracking and pupil area was used. A group of ten volunteers was presented with a set of neutral and arousal pictures extracted from the International Affective Picture System according to an ad-hoc experimental protocol. A set of features was extracted from eye gaze patterns and pupil size variations and used to classify the two classes of pictures. Although preliminary, results are very promising for affective computing applications.

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Acknowledgments

This research is partially supported by the EU Commission under contract FP7-ICT-247777 Psyche, and partially supported by the EU Commission under contract FP7-ICT-258749 CEEDs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Interdepartimental Research Centre “E.Piaggio”, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Antonio Lanatà, Gaetano Valenza & Enzo Pasquale Scilingo

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  1. Antonio Lanatà
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  2. Gaetano Valenza
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  3. Enzo Pasquale Scilingo
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Correspondence to Antonio Lanatà.

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Lanatà, A., Valenza, G. & Scilingo, E.P. Eye gaze patterns in emotional pictures. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 4, 705–715 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-012-0147-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-012-0147-6

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