Quantitative Electrodermal Activity Analysis of Simultaneous Recordings from Dyads during Affective Visual Task: Proof of Concept and Preliminary Results

Understanding social interactions in emotional and cognitive planes has been the object of recent research through quantitative psychophysiological measures. Among these, Electrodermal Activity (EDA) remained relatively underexplored. This study investigates the potential of EDA as a tool for distinguishing emotional states based on the arousal domain of affect in dyads. Twenty-two healthy participants (11 dyads) observed the same affective images in pairs. Four active sessions, composed of 20 images selected from the IAPS database, were presented with progressively increasing arousal levels. This study hypothesized that the physical presence of another subject during the affective stimulation affected the subject's perception and influenced their emotional response. Both intra-subject and inter-subject analyses revealed distinct patterns in EDA dynamics with increasing arousal, highlighting significant inter-individual variability in responses to identical stimuli. These findings underline EDA's potential as a psychophysiological marker for studying emotional states and provide a promising relevant contribution to hyperscanning studies, especially in exploring emotional synchrony and regulation within dyads during affective tasks.Clinical RelevanceThis study highlights the potential of EDA-based measures to support hyperscanning research, raising several questions about their role in exploring emotional synchrony and regulation within dyads during visually affective tasks. It lays a foundational framework for developing interventions aimed at enhancing social bonding, addressing arousal dysregulation, and improving emotional processing deficits.