Abstract
Confusion is a complex cognitive state that is prevalent during learning and problem-solving. The aim of this study is to explore the brain activity reflected by electroencephalography (EEG) during a confusing state induced by two kinds of information insufficiencies during mathematical problem-solving, namely, an explicit situation that clearly lacked information and an implicit situation in which the missing information was hidden in the problem itself, and whether there is an EEG difference between these two situations. Two experimental tasks and three control tasks were created. Short time Fourier transformation (STFT) was used for time-frequency analysis; then the alpha task-related-power (TRP) changes and distributions, which are closely related to cognitive processing, were calculated, and repeated measures ANOVA were performed to find the significant difference between task conditions. The results showed that the alpha power decreased significantly in the regions related to calculation when the participants encountered both explicit and implicit information insufficiency tasks compared to the control tasks, suggesting that confusion can cause more brain activity in the cortical regions related to the tasks that induce confusion. In addition, the implicit information insufficiency task elicited more activity in the parietal and right temporal regions, whereas the explicit information insufficiency task elicited additional activity in the frontal lobe, which revealed that the frontal region is related to the processing of novel or unfamiliar information and the parietal-temporal regions are involved in sustained attention or reorientation during confusing states induced by information insufficiency. In conclusion, this study has preliminarily investigated the EEG characteristics of confusion states, suggests that EEG is a promising methodology to detect confusion, and provides a basis for future studies aiming to achieve automatic recognition of confusing states.
Highlights
The human working process is a series of problem-solving processes that continually combine existing knowledge in the mind with outside information to achieve desired goals
task-related power (TRP) changes in the alpha band were analyzed for these pairs using repeated measures ANOVA considering the within-subject factors' condition (SA-Unknown operator calculation (UOC), Simple addition (SA)-New operator addition (NOA), NOA-UOC, Complex addition (CA)-Inductive reasoning (IR), SA-CA, and Certain-Uncertain), hemisphere, and area (prefrontal (PF), frontal (F), frontocentral (FC), centroparietal (CP), temporal (T), parietotemporal (PT), and occipital (O))
For the SA-UOC contrast, the 2 × 2 × 7 ANOVA suggested that the main effects of condition, hemisphere, and area were significant (F(1, 20) = 6.53, p = 0.019, partial-η2 = 0.246; F(1, 20) = 5.04, p = 0.036, partial-η2 = 0.201; F(6, 120) = 5.53, p = 0.016, partial-η2 = 0.217, respectively), which indicated that the UOC problems showed more task-related alpha decreases, and the alpha power was significantly lower in the frontal and occipital areas of the left hemisphere, as well as the temporal area of right hemisphere
Summary
The human working process is a series of problem-solving processes that continually combine existing knowledge in the mind with outside information to achieve desired goals. In terms of the development of technology, the knowledge and information needed for every walk of life is increasing dramatically, especially in the field of complex product design and modeling. “What” refers to the finding of information related to specific problems, an aspect that has been thoroughly investigated by researchers in knowledge and information fields. “When” refers to locating the appropriate timepoint at which to provide the related information, which is difficult to achieve with current context-based information service systems, even when the same person is faced with the exact same problems since one’s skill and knowledge backgrounds are changing constantly, not to mention the large individual differences. Considering the appropriate time is basically when designers are confused, the feeling that the environment is giving insufficient or contradictory information [1], the most direct and effective approach is to identify people’s confusing state, which has seldom been investigated in previous information service studies
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