Eye Tracking Glasses:How Stress Influences Our Visual Perception

Stress influences the perception of our surroundings – as has been shown by a recent study on eye tracking, conducted at Ruhr University Bochum. Cognitive psychologist Prof. Dr. Oliver T. Wolf and PhD student Nadja Herten examined the eye fixation of 63 participants while they were giving a short speech in front of a committee. While half of the test persons received positive feedback and experienced the situation as pleasant, the other half received no feedback or reassurance at all and thus found the situation stressful. This is also indicated by the participants’ levels of cortisol: The participants who felt uncomfortable displayed a considerably higher level of cortisol than those who enjoyed the situation. All participants wore eye tracking glasses while giving their speeches, enabling the researchers to analyze their eye fixation afterwards.

The study showed that the participants who perceived the situation as stressful focused on entirely different aspects than the others. The stressed participants concentrated on objects in the room instead of making eye-contact with members of the jury; in a memory test, conducted on the following day, they remembered the central objects in the room much better than the other participants. However, according to Wolf “there is no direct relation between those values and we have to consider further factors, such as stress hormones, in order to explain changes in the capacity to memorize.” The eye tracking study takes up previous research which indicated that the perception of landscapes is affected by stress as well.