Accessing Emotion Patterns from Affective Interactions Using Electrodermal Activity

Abstract

Measuring evocative emotions in affective interactions has become a critical step for effective engagements with computers. Electro dermal activity is believed to accurately isolate sympathetic responses, revealing paths to excitement, attention and arousal, and to differentiate emotional states. However, the inability to deal with varying amplitude and length of responses across individuals has led to its use as a simple intensity barometer. Thus, two questions remain unanswered. To which extent can electro dermal activity be used to recognize emotions? How do electro dermal responses vary between human-to-human and human-to-robot interactions? To answer these questions, we propose a new method to mine the signal that surpasses the referred limitations, and conduct an extensive experiment to study the responses to emotion-evocative stimuli across different settings. Observations reveal emerging electro dermal patterns for each emotion and attractive accuracy levels for emotion recognition that increases when there is a link to the psychological traits of the subjects.