Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study examined dynamic attractor states in skin conductance activity during resting baselines and media viewing in order to determine if there are qualitatively distinct dynamics during information processing and whether those dynamics vary based on features of task stimuli. The results indicate that media viewing shifts one from a resting non-chaotic attractor to a chaotic attractor. Content valence (positive or negative) and the emotional context in which videos were delivered (presentation order) had significant impact on the probability of exhibiting a chaotic attractor. Using the nonlinear dynamic systems approach, this study provides novel understandings of emotional information processing, the electrodermal system, and the relationship between physiological and emotional experiences.