Some firms, including Affectiva, have developed facial coding systems that use webcams and can perform the analysis automatically.

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Commercial trials are under way on Affectiva's skin-conductance sensors, wristwatch-size devices that detect emotional engagement by measuring tiny changes in sweat-gland activity.

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According to a press release from branding agency Millward Brown, facial coding by Affectiva and their own Link copy-testing will be the primary technique used to gauge consumer emotions.

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She and research scientist Rana el Kaliouby founded a spinoff called Affectiva last year to market affective technology that the two initially developed to help autistic children understand and communicate emotion.

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To suss out the characteristics of the most-compelling television ads, Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira conducted a series of experiments, in conjunction with the MIT Media Lab and Affectiva, a local emotion-tracking software company.

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Picard and her colleague Rana el Kaliouby are commercializing these technologies through a company called Affectiva, which might revolutionize market research by unobtrusively measuring facial expressions, skin conductance and heart rate in subjects responding to new products.

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Affectiva and Media Lab Ph.

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