Social interaction in a cooperative brain-computer interface game

Abstract

Does using a BCI influence the social interaction between people when playing a cooperative game? By measuring the amount of speech, utterances, instrumental gestures and empathic gestures during a cooperative game where two participants had to reach a certain goal, and questioning participants about their own experience afterwards this study attempts to provide answers to this question. The results showed that social interaction changed when using a BCI compared to using a mouse. There was a higher amount of utterances and empathic gestures. This indicates that the participants reacted more to the higher difficulty of the BCI selection method. Participants also reported that they felt they cooperated better during the use of the mouse. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.