4,938 research outputs found
Daily Stress Recognition from Mobile Phone Data, Weather Conditions and Individual Traits
Research has proven that stress reduces quality of life and causes many
diseases. For this reason, several researchers devised stress detection systems
based on physiological parameters. However, these systems require that
obtrusive sensors are continuously carried by the user. In our paper, we
propose an alternative approach providing evidence that daily stress can be
reliably recognized based on behavioral metrics, derived from the user's mobile
phone activity and from additional indicators, such as the weather conditions
(data pertaining to transitory properties of the environment) and the
personality traits (data concerning permanent dispositions of individuals). Our
multifactorial statistical model, which is person-independent, obtains the
accuracy score of 72.28% for a 2-class daily stress recognition problem. The
model is efficient to implement for most of multimedia applications due to
highly reduced low-dimensional feature space (32d). Moreover, we identify and
discuss the indicators which have strong predictive power.Comment: ACM Multimedia 2014, November 3-7, 2014, Orlando, Florida, US
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mHealth Research Applied to Regulated and Unregulated Behavioral Health Sciences
Behavioral scientists are developing new methods and frameworks that leverage mobile health technologies to optimize individual level behavior change. Pervasive sensors and mobile apps allow researchers to passively observe human behaviors “in the wild” 24/7 which supports delivery of personalized interventions in the real-world environment. This is all possible because these technologies contain an incredible array of sensors that allow applications to constantly record user location and can contextualize current environmental conditions through barometers, thermometers, and ambient light sensors and can also capture audio and video of the user and their surroundings through multiple integrated high-definition cameras and microphones. These tools are a game changer in behavioral health research and, not surprisingly, introduce new ethical, regulatory/legal and social implications described in this article
Assentication: User Deauthentication and Lunchtime Attack Mitigation with Seated Posture Biometric
Biometric techniques are often used as an extra security factor in
authenticating human users. Numerous biometrics have been proposed and
evaluated, each with its own set of benefits and pitfalls. Static biometrics
(such as fingerprints) are geared for discrete operation, to identify users,
which typically involves some user burden. Meanwhile, behavioral biometrics
(such as keystroke dynamics) are well suited for continuous, and sometimes more
unobtrusive, operation. One important application domain for biometrics is
deauthentication, a means of quickly detecting absence of a previously
authenticated user and immediately terminating that user's active secure
sessions. Deauthentication is crucial for mitigating so called Lunchtime
Attacks, whereby an insider adversary takes over (before any inactivity timeout
kicks in) authenticated state of a careless user who walks away from her
computer. Motivated primarily by the need for an unobtrusive and continuous
biometric to support effective deauthentication, we introduce PoPa, a new
hybrid biometric based on a human user's seated posture pattern. PoPa captures
a unique combination of physiological and behavioral traits. We describe a low
cost fully functioning prototype that involves an office chair instrumented
with 16 tiny pressure sensors. We also explore (via user experiments) how PoPa
can be used in a typical workplace to provide continuous authentication (and
deauthentication) of users. We experimentally assess viability of PoPa in terms
of uniqueness by collecting and evaluating posture patterns of a cohort of
users. Results show that PoPa exhibits very low false positive, and even lower
false negative, rates. In particular, users can be identified with, on average,
91.0% accuracy. Finally, we compare pros and cons of PoPa with those of several
prominent biometric based deauthentication techniques
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Multi-Modal Data Collection for Measuring Health, Behavior, and Living Environment of Large-Scale Participant Cohorts: Conceptual Framework and Findings from Deployments
As mobile technologies become ever more sensor-rich, portable, and ubiquitous, data captured by smart devices are lending rich insights into users' daily lives with unprecedented comprehensiveness, unobtrusiveness, and ecological validity. A number of human-subject studies have been conducted in the past decade to examine the use of mobile sensing to uncover individual behavioral patterns and health outcomes. While understanding health and behavior is the focus for most of these studies, we find that minimal attention has been placed on measuring personal environments, especially together with other human-centric data modalities. Moreover, the participant cohort size in most existing studies falls well below a few hundred, leaving questions open about the reliability of findings on the relations between mobile sensing signals and human outcomes. To address these limitations, we developed a home environment sensor kit for continuous indoor air quality tracking and deployed it in conjunction with established mobile sensing and experience sampling techniques in a cohort study of up to 1584 student participants per data type for 3 weeks at a major research university in the United States. In this paper, we begin by proposing a conceptual framework that systematically organizes human-centric data modalities by their temporal coverage and spatial freedom. Then we report our study design and procedure, technologies and methods deployed, descriptive statistics of the collected data, and results from our extensive exploratory analyses. Our novel data, conceptual development, and analytical findings provide important guidance for data collection and hypothesis generation in future human-centric sensing studies.This work was supported by Whole Communities—Whole Health, a research
grand challenge at the University of Texas at Austin, and National Science
Foundation Award SES-1758835.Office of the VP for Researc
The Response of Beef Cattle to Disturbances from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly becoming common in animal agriculture. However, research regarding the impact of UAV disturbance on animal wellbeing is lacking or limited. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of UAV flights on beef cattle by measuring cattle heart and movement rate when introduced to single or multiple UAV flights. A total of 16 -18 crossbred beef heifers were introduced to different flights patterns at between 5 and 9 m above ground level (AGL) at approximately 1 to 2 m/s horizontal velocity for 4 weeks with flights repeated 3 days per week. Results from the study showed that single UAV flights conducted in (i) circular and (ii) grid pattern flights had no significant effect on heifer heart and movement rate. However, multiple (i) circular pattern and (ii) approach style flights increased heifer heart rate when first introduced to UAVs, but repeated flights resulted in habituation. Moreover, heifers first introduced to circular pattern flights were likely to flee but became habituated after repeated flights. However, heifers introduced to approach style flights showed more fleeing behavior even after repeated flights. The findings of this study will provide information for safely using UAVs in cattle health and behavior monitoring
Using Sensors in Organizational Research-Clarifying Rationales and Validation Challenges for Mixed Methods
Sensor-based data are becoming increasingly widespread in social, behavioral, and organizational sciences. Far from providing a neutral window on 'reality,' sensor-based big-data are highly complex, constructed data sources. Nevertheless, a more systematic approach to the validation of sensors as a method of data collection is lacking, as their use and conceptualization have been spread out across different strands of social-, behavioral-, and computer science literature. Further debunking the myth of raw data, the present article argues that, in order to validate sensor-based data, researchers need to take into account the mutual interdependence between types of sensors available on the market, the conceptual (construct) choices made in the research process, and the contextual cues. Sensor-based data in research are usually combined with additional quantitative and qualitative data sources. However, the incompatibility between the highly granular nature of sensor data and the static, a-temporal character of traditional quantitative and qualitative data has not been sufficiently emphasized as a key limiting factor of sensor-based research. It is likely that the failure to consider the basic quality criteria of social science measurement indicators more explicitly may lead to the production of insignificant results, despite the availability of high volume and high-resolution data. The paper concludes with recommendations for designing and conducting mixed methods studies using sensors
Digital Traces of the Mind::Using Smartphones to Capture Signals of Well-Being in Individuals
General context and questions Adolescents and young adults typically use their smartphone several hours a day. Although there are concerns about how such behaviour might affect their well-being, the popularity of these powerful devices also opens novel opportunities for monitoring well-being in daily life. If successful, monitoring well-being in daily life provides novel opportunities to develop future interventions that provide personalized support to individuals at the moment they require it (just-in-time adaptive interventions). Taking an interdisciplinary approach with insights from communication, computational, and psychological science, this dissertation investigated the relation between smartphone app use and well-being and developed machine learning models to estimate an individual’s well-being based on how they interact with their smartphone. To elucidate the relation between smartphone trace data and well-being and to contribute to the development of technologies for monitoring well-being in future clinical practice, this dissertation addressed two overarching questions:RQ1: Can we find empirical support for theoretically motivated relations between smartphone trace data and well-being in individuals? RQ2: Can we use smartphone trace data to monitor well-being in individuals?Aims The first aim of this dissertation was to quantify the relation between the collected smartphone trace data and momentary well-being at the sample level, but also for each individual, following recent conceptual insights and empirical findings in psychological, communication, and computational science. A strength of this personalized (or idiographic) approach is that it allows us to capture how individuals might differ in how smartphone app use is related to their well-being. Considering such interindividual differences is important to determine if some individuals might potentially benefit from spending more time on their smartphone apps whereas others do not or even experience adverse effects. The second aim of this dissertation was to develop models for monitoring well-being in daily life. The present work pursued this transdisciplinary aim by taking a machine learning approach and evaluating to what extent we might estimate an individual’s well-being based on their smartphone trace data. If such traces can be used for this purpose by helping to pinpoint when individuals are unwell, they might be a useful data source for developing future interventions that provide personalized support to individuals at the moment they require it (just-in-time adaptive interventions). With this aim, the dissertation follows current developments in psychoinformatics and psychiatry, where much research resources are invested in using smartphone traces and similar data (obtained with smartphone sensors and wearables) to develop technologies for detecting whether an individual is currently unwell or will be in the future. Data collection and analysis This work combined novel data collection techniques (digital phenotyping and experience sampling methodology) for measuring smartphone use and well-being in the daily lives of 247 student participants. For a period up to four months, a dedicated application installed on participants’ smartphones collected smartphone trace data. In the same time period, participants completed a brief smartphone-based well-being survey five times a day (for 30 days in the first month and 30 days in the fourth month; up to 300 assessments in total). At each measurement, this survey comprised questions about the participants’ momentary level of procrastination, stress, and fatigue, while sleep duration was measured in the morning. Taking a time-series and machine learning approach to analysing these data, I provide the following contributions: Chapter 2 investigates the person-specific relation between passively logged usage of different application types and momentary subjective procrastination, Chapter 3 develops machine learning methodology to estimate sleep duration using smartphone trace data, Chapter 4 combines machine learning and explainable artificial intelligence to discover smartphone-tracked digital markers of momentary subjective stress, Chapter 5 uses a personalized machine learning approach to evaluate if smartphone trace data contains behavioral signs of fatigue. Collectively, these empirical studies provide preliminary answers to the overarching questions of this dissertation.Summary of results With respect to the theoretically motivated relations between smartphone trace data and wellbeing (RQ1), we found that different patterns in smartphone trace data, from time spent on social network, messenger, video, and game applications to smartphone-tracked sleep proxies, are related to well-being in individuals. The strength and nature of this relation depends on the individual and app usage pattern under consideration. The relation between smartphone app use patterns and well-being is limited in most individuals, but relatively strong in a minority. Whereas some individuals might benefit from using specific app types, others might experience decreases in well-being when spending more time on these apps. With respect to the question whether we might use smartphone trace data to monitor well-being in individuals (RQ2), we found that smartphone trace data might be useful for this purpose in some individuals and to some extent. They appear most relevant in the context of sleep monitoring (Chapter 3) and have the potential to be included as one of several data sources for monitoring momentary procrastination (Chapter 2), stress (Chapter 4), and fatigue (Chapter 5) in daily life. Outlook Future interdisciplinary research is needed to investigate whether the relationship between smartphone use and well-being depends on the nature of the activities performed on these devices, the content they present, and the context in which they are used. Answering these questions is essential to unravel the complex puzzle of developing technologies for monitoring well-being in daily life.<br/
Understanding the Social Context of Eating with Multimodal Smartphone Sensing: The Role of Country Diversity
Understanding the social context of eating is crucial for promoting healthy
eating behaviors by providing timely interventions. Multimodal smartphone
sensing data has the potential to provide valuable insights into eating
behavior, particularly in mobile food diaries and mobile health applications.
However, research on the social context of eating with smartphone sensor data
is limited, despite extensive study in nutrition and behavioral science.
Moreover, the impact of country differences on the social context of eating, as
measured by multimodal phone sensor data and self-reports, remains
under-explored. To address this research gap, we present a study using a
smartphone sensing dataset from eight countries (China, Denmark, India, Italy,
Mexico, Mongolia, Paraguay, and the UK). Our study focuses on a set of
approximately 24K self-reports on eating events provided by 678 college
students to investigate the country diversity that emerges from smartphone
sensors during eating events for different social contexts (alone or with
others). Our analysis revealed that while some smartphone usage features during
eating events were similar across countries, others exhibited unique behaviors
in each country. We further studied how user and country-specific factors
impact social context inference by developing machine learning models with
population-level (non-personalized) and hybrid (partially personalized)
experimental setups. We showed that models based on the hybrid approach achieve
AUC scores up to 0.75 with XGBoost models. These findings have implications for
future research on mobile food diaries and mobile health sensing systems,
emphasizing the importance of considering country differences in building and
deploying machine learning models to minimize biases and improve generalization
across different populations
App-based feedback on safety to novice drivers: learning and monetary incentives
An over-proportionally large number of car crashes is caused by novice drivers. In a field experiment, we investigated whether and how car drivers who had recently obtained their driving license reacted to app-based feedback on their safety-relevant driving behavior (speeding, phone usage, cornering, acceleration and braking). Participants went through a pre-measurement phase during which they did not receive app-based feedback but driving behavior was recorded, a treatment phase during which they received app-based feedback, and a post-measurement phase during which they did not receive app-based feedback but driving behavior was recorded. Before the start of the treatment phase, we randomly assigned participants to two possible treatment groups. In addition to receiving app-based feedback, the participants of one group received monetary incentives to improve their safety-relevant driving behavior, while the participants of the other group did not. At the beginning and at the end of experiment, each participant had to fill out a questionnaire to elicit socio-economic and attitudinal information.
We conducted regression analyses to identify socio-economic, attitudinal, and driving-behavior-related variables that explain safety-relevant driving behavior during the pre-measurement phase and the self-chosen intensity of app usage during the treatment phase. For the main objective of our study, we applied regression analyses to identify those variables that explain the potential effect of providing app-based feedback during the treatment phase on safety-relevant driving behavior. Last, we applied statistical tests of differences to identify self-selection and attrition biases in our field experiment.
For a sample of 130 novice Austrian drivers, we found moderate improvements in safety-relevant driving skills due to app-based feedback. The improvements were more pronounced under the treatment with monetary incentives, and for participants choosing higher feedback intensities. Moreover, drivers who drove relatively safer before receiving app-based feedback used the app more intensely and, ceteris paribus, higher app use intensity led to improvements in safety-related driving skills. Last, we provide empirical evidence for both self-selection and attrition biases
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