A Preliminary Study on Pupil Size Changes Detection on Mental Stress With Mental Stressor

This is a study on measuring the effect of stress that stimulated by the different difficulty of game level on pupil dilation. Playing games are claimed a method to distress in the community, however, this activity is enhancing stress level? The effect of the game playing on the changes of pupil dilation is unknown. An investigation was conducted on relating the changes of pupil diameter measurement at the different difficulty levels of the game. A simple tool was developed by using a webcam as image acquisition device together with MATLAB Image Processing Tool to analyze the acquired images. Here, experiments on the pupil detection algorithm, which consisted of four different methods are to work alternatively with one another and to provide higher chances of pupil detection. 10 subjects were involved in the experiments, which they were requested to play a selected game with four different ascending increased in difficulties, meanwhile, pupil size changes were measured simultaneously. The selected game served as a stress stimulus to the subjects. The result showed a positive proportional relationship between increased in game difficulty levels and pupil dilation. The investigation reported that the pupil dilated when the difficulty of game level increased. Limitation of this study is the sample size on the prototype testing should be increased to concrete the outcome.