Eye-Tracker Study of Influence of Affective Disruptive Content on User’s Visual Attention and Emotional State

Abstract

When reading interesting content or searching for information on a website, the appearance of a pop-up advertisement in the middle of the screen is perceived as irritating by a recipient. Interrupted cognitive processes are considered unwanted by the user but desired by advertising providers. Diverting visual attention away from the main content is intended to focus the user on the appeared disruptive content. Is the attempt to reach the user by any means justified? In this study, we examined the impact of pop-up emotional content on user reactions. For this purpose, a cognitive experiment was designed where a text-reading task was interrupted by two types of affective pictures: positive and negative ones. To measure the changes in user reactions, an eye-tracker (for analysis of eye movements and changes in gaze points) and an iMotion Platform (for analysis of face muscles’ movements) were used. The results confirm the impact of the type of emotional content on users’ reactions during cognitive process interruptions and indicate that the negative impact of cognitive process interruptions on the user can be reduced. The negative content evoked lower cognitive load, narrower visual attention, and lower irritation compared to positive content. These results offer insight on how to provide more efficient Internet advertising.

Do Biometric Analyses and Empathy Training Predict the Development of Empathy?

“…The first group, which we refer to as our "control" group was asked to watch a short video with no empathy content (i.e., a "cleansing" video). iMotions software was used to collect biometric information on these respondents as they watched the video (Lewandowska et al, 2022;Warnick et al, 2021). The biometric information was used to identify (with 70% certainty) whether respondents facial micro-expressions expressed one of three states: joy, contempt, and engagement.…”

Effect of Interruptions and Cognitive Demand on Mental Workload: A Critical Review

“…Other sources (stimuli) outside the individual such as phone calls, emails, environment, and other distractions lead to external interruptions [69]. Mental interruptions (such as reading, math problems, and sentence and noun repetition) [54], [72], [73], [74], [75], [76] social interruptions (such as phone calls and discussions) [54], [72], [77], [78], [79], [80], pop-ups and messages (such as chatanswering and suggestion messages) [81], [82], [83], [84], [85], [86], [87], [88], and auditory and verbal disruption (such as " xcuse me could you please help me " giving feedback and alarm) [71], [73], [89], [90], [91]…”

“…The valence-arousal-dominance paradigm identifies three aspects of an individual's emotional state: a dominance dimension from being in charge to being ruled by emotions, an arousal component from not being stimulated to excitement, and a valence dimension from dislike to pleasure [108]. Compared to positive material, negative content elicited less cognitive burden, visual attention, and annoyance [81]. In the problem identification phase, interrupted participants reported having a more unfavorable attitude toward interruptions [83].…”

“…Participants must be carefully chosen to portray the audience's vital demographic traits and other features. A total of 33 studies were assessed, 16 of which selected employees to participate in the experiments [54], [70], [74], [77], [80], [81], [84], [86], [90], [91], [92], [93], [95], [96], [99], [100]. Alternative studies used undergraduate students.…”

Prediction and empirical research on the evolution trend of individual opinions in knowledge collaboration

“…An eye tracker is a device used for eye tracking to measure the observer's eye position and eye movements. Most of these studies use eye movements to analyze user interest [23] , visual search process [24] , emotion recognition [25] , and human behavior recognition [26] . In this paper, eye trackers are used to analyze the conversion of gaze points between opinions, so as to obtain the real-time changes in the opinions held by individuals, and use them as data sources for analysis.…”