The three studies explored here are different attempts to quantify emotions. Peter Lang explored the use of slides to induce emotions in subjects. He then assigned valence and arousal coordinates to each picture and mapped them in a two-dimensional space. Ward Winton, Lois Putnam, and Robert Krauss added heart rate sensors (HR) and galvanic skin conduction detectors (SC) to subjects viewing similarly evocative slides. Winton, Putnam, and Krauss correlated their slides' pleasantness against the measured HR and SC of the subject. Dr. Manfred Clynes asked his subjects to remember and re-live past emotional experiences while collecting sentic data from his subjects.
Combining the tests of all five of these researchers will provide a new technique for measuring the valence of the stimulus. The work of Dr. Clynes illustrates that valence can readily be extracted from sentic data, and the work of Winton, Putnam, and Krauss demonstrates that valence information exists in the acceleration of HR. To verify this an ordinary computer mouse button was augmented with a force resistor to detect the dynamic finger pressure of the user. The user, wearing EKG, HR, SC, and BVP sensors, used this mouse while viewing the affective database from Lang's experiments. With the measured heart rate and sentic data, the validity of a predictive correlation between these signals and the valence of the stimulus will be assessed.