Authors:
Camille Jeunet
1
;
Fabien Lotte
2
and
Christian Mühl
2
Affiliations:
1
Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest and Université Bordeaux Segalen, France
;
2
Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, France
Keyword(s):
Mental Stress, Psychosocial Stress, Cognitive Workload, Physiological Computing, ECG, GSR, EEG.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Affective Computing
;
Applications
;
Biosignal Acquisition, Analysis and Processing
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Methodologies and Methods
;
Physiological Computing Systems
Abstract:
Stress is a major societal issue with negative impacts on health and economy. Physiological computing offers
a continuous, direct, and unobtrusive method for stress level assessment and computer-assisted stress
management. However, stress is a complex construct and its physiology can vary depending on its source:
cognitive workload or social evaluation. To study the feasibility of physiology-based load-invariant psychosocial
stress-detection, we designed a stress-induction protocol able to independently vary the relevant types of
psychophysiological activity: mental and psychosocial stress. Here, we validate the efficacy of our protocol
to induce psychosocial and mental stress. Our participants (N=24) had to perform a cognitive task associated
with two workload conditions (low/high mental stress), in two contexts (low/high psychosocial stress), during
which we recorded subjects’ self-reports, behaviour, physiology and neurophysiology. Questionnaires showed
that the subjectively perce
ived level of stress varied with the psychosocial stress induction, while perceived
arousal and mental effort levels vary with mental stress induction. Behaviour and physiology further corroborated
the validity of our protocol. Heart rate and skin conductance globally increased after psychosocial
stress induction relative to the non-stressful condition. Moreover, we demonstrated that higher workload tasks
(mental stress) led to decrease in performance and a marked increase of heart rate.
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