Emotiogenic Stimulator of the Human Cognitive Activity Level

Abstract

AbstractThe paper considers the features of the method for monitoring and controlling the level of human (testee’s) cognitive activity during long-term performance of the same type of computing operations. There is a description of an emotiogenic stimulator model (ESM) that is focused on the task of controlling the duration of emotional stimulation using the Sugeno fuzzy algorithm. ESM increases the level of testee’s cognitive activity when he performs a flow of homogeneous computing operations. The paper presents the results of scientific studies of electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns obtained from 30 testees (students and postgraduates of the Tver State Technical University aged 20–26 years) within 60 experiments carried out according to the methodology proposed in this paper. The EEG pattern analysis involved mathematical apparatus of nonlinear dynamics (the features of an attractor two-dimensional projection) and spectral analysis (absolute power values features). The new feature space is a good generalization and refinement of EEG pattern descriptions for different levels of cognitive activity. The required time for emotional stimulation of the testees was tracked based on the cognitive activity level assessment using heuristic rules. After emotional stimulation procedures, the following tendencies were established: (a) an increase in the spectral feature values at the frequency intervals corresponding to delta, theta and beta rhythms; (b) an increase in the first and a decrease in the second values of informative features of the two-dimensional attractor projection; (c) a decrease in the time for forming testees’ responses to the assigned computing tasks; (d) a decrease in the number of mistakes made by the testees when they perform cognitive tasks. The revealed tendencies are typical for all testees within approximately 30–40 min after presenting the corresponding emotional stimuli. The ESM tests made it possible to expand the set of informative features for assessing the level of human cognitive activity and to choose the most effective algorithm for correcting the emotional stimulation time. The presented results can be considered as experimental evidence of the possibility of implementing an emotional stimulation scheme to control the level of cognitive activity of a user of computer information systems. #CSOC1120KeywordsCognitive activityEmotional reactionEmotionStimulatorEmotional stimulationEEGEMGFuzzy algorithmPower spectrumAttractor