Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Modeling cognitive load and physiological arousal through pupil diameter and heart rate
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Creative Technologies.
CSIRO Mineral Resources, AUS.
Intelligent Sensing and Systems Laboratory, CSIRO ICT Centre, AUS .
2020 (English)In: Multimedia tools and applications, ISSN 1380-7501, E-ISSN 1573-7721, Vol. 79, no 5-6, p. 3145-3159Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This study investigates individuals’ cognitive load processing abilities while engaged on a decision-making task in serious games, to explore how a substantial cognitive load dominates over the physiological arousal effect on pupil diameter. A serious game was presented to the participants, which displayed the on–line biofeedback based on physiological measurements of arousal. In such dynamic decision-making environment, the pupil diameter was analyzed in relation to the heart rate, to evaluate if the former could be a useful measure of cognitive abilities of individuals. As pupil might reflect both cognitive activity and physiological arousal, the pupillary response will show an arousal effect only when the cognitive demands of the situation are minimal. Evidence shows that in a situation where a substantial level of cognitive activity is required, only that activity will be observable on the pupil diameter, dominating over the physiological arousal effect indicated by the pupillary response. It is suggested that it might be possible to design serious games tailored to the cognitive abilities of an individual player, using the proposed physiological measurements to observe the moment when such dominance occurs. © 2018, The Author(s).

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer New York LLC , 2020. Vol. 79, no 5-6, p. 3145-3159
Keywords [en]
Arousal, Cognitive load, Electrocardiogram, Physiology, Pupil diameter, Serious games, Biofeedback, Decision making, Electrocardiography, Heart, Neurophysiology, Physiological models, Cognitive activities, Cognitive loads, Dynamic decision making, Physiological measurement, Processing ability, Pupillary response, Psychophysiology
National Category
Other Computer and Information Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-17052DOI: 10.1007/s11042-018-6518-zISI: 000519410700006Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85053407843OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-17052DiVA, id: diva2:1251454
Note

open access

Available from: 2018-09-27 Created: 2018-09-27 Last updated: 2020-04-16Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. The Effects of Emotions and Their Regulation on Decision-making Performance in Affective Serious Games
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Effects of Emotions and Their Regulation on Decision-making Performance in Affective Serious Games
2019 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Emotions are thought to be one of the key factors that critically influence human decision-making. Emotion-regulation can help to mitigate emotion-related decision biases and eventually lead to a better decision performance. Serious games emerged as a new angle introducing technological methods to practicing emotion-regulation, where meaningful biofeedback information communicates player's affective states to a series of informed gameplay choices. These findings motivate the notion that in the decision context of serious games, one would benefit from awareness and regulation of such emerging emotions.

This thesis explores the design and evaluation methods for creating serious games where emotion-regulation can be practiced using physiological biofeedback measures. Furthermore, it investigates emotions and the effect of emotion-regulation on decision performance in serious games. Using the psychophysiological methods in the design of such games, emotions and their underlying neural mechanism have been explored.

The results showed the benefits of practicing emotion-regulation in serious games, where decision-making performance was increased for the individuals who down-regulated high levels of arousal while having an experience of positive valence. Moreover, it increased also for the individuals who received the necessary biofeedback information. The results also suggested that emotion-regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal) are highly dependent on the serious game context. Therefore, the reappraisal strategy was shown to benefit the decision-making tasks investigated in this thesis. The results further suggested that using psychophysiological methods in emotionally arousing serious games, the interplay between sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways could be mapped through the underlying emotions which activate those two pathways. Following this conjecture, the results identified the optimal arousal level for increased performance of an individual on a decision-making task, by carefully balancing the activation of those two pathways. The investigations also validated these findings in the collaborative serious game context, where the robot collaborators were found to elicit diverse affect in their human partners, influencing performance on a decision-making task. Furthermore, the evidence suggested that arousal is equally or more important than valence for the decision-making performance, but once optimal arousal has been reached, a further increase in performance may be achieved by regulating valence. Furthermore, the results showed that serious games designed in this thesis elicited high physiological arousal and positive valence. This makes them suitable as research platforms for the investigation of how these emotions influence the activation of sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways and influence performance on a decision-making task.

Taking these findings into consideration, the serious games designed in this thesis allowed for the training of cognitive reappraisal emotion-regulation strategy on the decision-making tasks. This thesis suggests that using evaluated design and development methods, it is possible to design and develop serious games that provide a helpful environment where individuals could practice emotion-regulation through raising awareness of emotions, and subsequently improve their decision-making performance.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Karlskrona: Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, 2019. p. 297
Series
Blekinge Institute of Technology Doctoral Dissertation Series, ISSN 1653-2090 ; 6
Keywords
Serious Games, Game Design, Emotions, Biofeedback, Emotion-Regulation, Decision-Making
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:bth-17557 (URN)978-91-7295-370-3 (ISBN)
Public defence
2019-04-26, J1640, Campus Gräsvik, Karlskrona, 09:12 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2019-01-31 Created: 2019-01-30 Last updated: 2019-05-09Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(1045 kB)383 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 1045 kBChecksum SHA-512
05c092d8d935f4aff3268c2b67c62ad796fd1bfc1907ce2e1cbfa0f21eda2fc1811245438994c330c35f2bf124a160e29da55affe6ccba5c5c07d40c256646a3
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Jerčić, PetarSennersten, Charlotte

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Jerčić, PetarSennersten, Charlotte
By organisation
Department of Creative Technologies
In the same journal
Multimedia tools and applications
Other Computer and Information Science

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 383 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 661 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf