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Induced Stress Changes Affective Sensitivity and Eye Responses to Event Boundaries in Commercial Movies

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Ruiyi Chen¹ (), Khena Swallow¹; ¹Cornell University

Event segmentation refers to the cognitive process through which continuous experience is organized into discrete, meaningful units. Prior research has shown that this process is linked to emotional changes perceived in the external world (Chen & Swallow, 2025), suggesting that external emotional cues may shape how people identify event boundaries. However, little is known about how internal affective states, such as positive or negative mood, influence the perception and organization of ongoing events. In this study, we examined how induced stress affects both behavioral performance and eye dynamics during an event segmentation task. Over five trials, participants first viewed either stressful (N = 27) or neutral (N = 28) induction videos. They then segmented the same task videos from commercially produced films while their pupil size and gaze were recorded. The induction procedure resulted in greater negative affect in the stressful group compared to the neutral group. These stressed participants, relative to neutral participants, identified boundaries that aligned more closely with fluctuations in the video’s valence and arousal. This indicates that individuals are more sensitive to affective changes under stress. In addition, participants in the stressful group exhibited larger transient increase in pupillary responses and gaze similarity at event boundaries compared to those in the neutral group. This suggests that stress induction leads to greater pupil reactivity and increased attention to normative information. Together, these results highlight the complex interplay between internal affective states, external emotional cues, and perception of ongoing experience.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions