The Identification of Stress Reactions Using Analysis of Oculomotor Activity

A current trend in stress research involves the developments of advanced neurocognitive and behavioral methods to investigate new stress indices. In this way using the eye movements seems to be a novel perspective approach for identifying stress response. This study examined the opportunity of applying eye movement registration for stress level estimating. The results showed that following immersion in a stress-induced virtual environment, participants with both a fear of heights and elevated levels of psychological stress exhibited a greater number of fixations on stress-inducing stimuli. Additionally, significant alterations in gaze trajectory length and pupil diameter were observed between neutral photographs pre- and post-immersion in virtual reality among participants with heightened stress levels. These findings may contribute to the development of innovative technologies for more precise stress diagnostics and effective stress management.