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doi: 10.4121/14134874

de Winter, Joost; S.M. (Sebastiaan) Petermeijer; Kooijman, L. (Lars); Dodou, Dimitra (2021): Supplementary data for the paper: Replicating five pupillometry studies of Eckhard Hess. Version 2. 4TU.ResearchData. dataset. https://doi.org/10.4121/14134874.v2

Dataset

x choose version: version 1 - 2021-04-12

• Cognitive Sciences
• Psychology

arousal, gender differences, interest, mental demands, pupil dilation, replication study

CC0

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by Joost de Winter , S.M. (Sebastiaan) Petermeijer, L. (Lars) Kooijman , Dimitra Dodou

Several papers by Eckhard Hess from the 1960s and 1970s report that the pupils dilate or constrict according to the interest value, arousing content, or mental demands of visual stimuli. However, Hess mostly used small sample sizes and undocumented luminance control. In a first experiment (N = 182) and a second preregistered experiment (N = 147), we replicated five studies of Hess using modern equipment. Our experiments (1) did not support the hypothesis of gender differences in pupil diameter change with respect to baseline (PC) when viewing stimuli of different interest value, (2) showed that solving more difficult multiplications yields a larger PC in the seconds before providing an answer and a larger maximum PC, but a smaller PC at a fixed time after the onset of the multiplication, (3) did not support the hypothesis that participants’ PC mimics the pupil diameter in a pair of schematic eyes but not in single-eyed or three-eyed stimuli, (4) did not support the hypothesis of gender differences in PC when watching a video of a male trying to escape a mob, and (5) supported the hypothesis that arousing words yield a higher PC than non-arousing words. Although we did not observe consistent gender differences in PC, supplementary analyses showed gender differences in eye movements towards erogenous zones. Furthermore, PC strongly correlated with the luminance of the locations where participants looked. Overall, our replications confirm Hess’s findings that pupils dilate in response to mental demands and stimuli of an arousing nature. Hess’s hypotheses regarding pupil mimicry and gender differences in pupil dilation did not replicate.

• 2021-04-12 first online

• 2021-04-14 published, posted

4TU.ResearchData

Replicating five pupillometry studies of Eckhard Hess

• A replication study of ‘pupil size as related to interest value of visual stimuli’ (Hess & Polt, 1960) (grant code 401.16.083) [more info...] Dutch Research Council

Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering