Estimation of Stress Condition of Children by Nasal Skin Temperature

Abstract

In Japan a lot of children stay home alone after school. Safety of children is a big issue. In addition, a stability of their emotion is a big issue. For the stability of their emotion, it is important to know the psychological state of children, particularly stress so that we can try to relieve their stress. As for the detection of the stress, it is preferred to detect in a less constrained or non-contact way. The nasal skin temperature is known to be affected by emotion, which can be detected in a non-contact way with an infrared thermography camera. In this paper, we report our experimental results about the detection of stress condition of children by the nasal skin temperature with the infrared thermography camera. In estimating the stress condition, we use a heart rate variability as a physiological index. With our experimental results, we show that the stress condition of children can be estimated by the nasal skin temperature. We also show that when the stress index rises, the change of the nasal skin temperature differs depending on their ages.