GSR and blink features for cognitive load classification

Abstract

A system capable of monitoring its user's mental workload can evaluate the suitability of its interface and interactions for user's current cognitive status and properly change them when necessary. Galvanic skin response (GSR) and eye blinks are cognitive load measures which can be captured conveniently and at low cost. The present study has assessed multiple features of these two signals in classification of cognitive workload level. The experiment included arithmetic tasks with four difficulty levels and two types of machine learning algorithms have been applied for classification. Obtained results show that the studied features of blink and GSR can reasonably discriminate workload levels and combining features of the two modalities improves the accuracy of cognitive load classification. We have achieved around 75% for binary classification and more than 50% for four-class classification. © 2013 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.