Eye-Tracking as a behavioral measure of attention using IAPS slides

Abstract

The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is a set of photographs for the induction of emotions in experimental investigations. There are few studies that use the eye tracking technique to compare attention to figure-background of IAPS slides according to their emotional valence. An experiment was made to study attention to figurebackground, understood as visual fixations to 30 IAPS slides of different valence (positive, negative and neutral) in university students. The results showed that, visual fixations rate was similar for the figure-background areas in negative valence slides, while participants attended the figure more than the background in the slides with neutral and positive valence. Suggesting that participants made an escape response from the figure during slides with negative valence when they emited less fixations. Additionally, fixation rate observed with an eye tracking technique is proposed as a behavioral measure of attention.

Keywords

• international affective picture system
• valence
• eye fixation
• attention
• human