Abstract
This study employed auditory and visual stimuli to investigate the relationship between eye movement and mental stress. Ten participants were asked to perform complex (subtracting a two-digit value from a three-digit one) and simple (adding two single-digit values) calculation tasks presented on a computer display or recited by a computer voice. As a control condition, participants were asked to listen to a recitation along with the auditory presentation. During the visual presentation, significant differences in the ratio that the participants cast their eyes on the display were observed in three tasks. Moreover, in the complex calculation task, the ratio was significantly higher during the visual presentation than during the control condition. The active index of the parasympathetic nervous system (HF/(LF+HF)) during the calculation tasks tended to be lower than during the control task. From the analysis of eye movement data divided into periodic parts, in the visual presentation with the answering period of complex calculation task, where participants did not require to watch the display, eye movements outside the display were observed to be uniform. Moreover, eye movement in the lower side of display tended to be frequent than that in the upper side. These results suggest that eye movement was influenced by not only mental stress but also sensation modality.
