Unveiling productivity: The interplay of cognitive arousal and expressive typing in remote work

PLoS One. 2024 May 15;19(5):e0300786. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300786. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Cognitive Arousal, frequently elicited by environmental stressors that exceed personal coping resources, manifests in measurable physiological markers, notably in galvanic skin responses. This effect is prominent in cognitive tasks such as composition, where fluctuations in these biomarkers correlate with individual expressiveness. It is crucial to understand the nexus between cognitive arousal and expressiveness. However, there has not been a concrete study that investigates this inter-relation concurrently. Addressing this, we introduce an innovative methodology for simultaneous monitoring of these elements. Our strategy employs Bayesian analysis in a multi-state filtering format to dissect psychomotor performance (captured through typing speed), galvanic skin response or skin conductance (SC), and heart rate variability (HRV). This integrative analysis facilitates the quantification of expressive behavior and arousal states. At the core, we deploy a state-space model connecting one latent psychological arousal condition to neural activities impacting sweating (inferred through SC responses) and another latent state to expressive behavior during typing. These states are concurrently evaluated with model parameters using an expectation-maximization algorithms approach. Assessments using both computer-simulated data and experimental data substantiate the validity of our approach. Outcomes display distinguishable latent state patterns in expressive typing and arousal across different computer software used in office management, offering profound implications for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and productivity analysis. This research marks a significant advancement in decoding human productivity dynamics, with extensive repercussions for optimizing performance in telecommuting scenarios.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Algorithms
  • Arousal* / physiology
  • Bayes Theorem*
  • Cognition* / physiology
  • Efficiency / physiology
  • Female
  • Galvanic Skin Response* / physiology
  • Heart Rate* / physiology
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Psychomotor Performance / physiology
  • Teleworking
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by NSF grant 2226123 - CAREER: MINDWATCH: Multimodal Intelligent Noninvasive brain state Decoder for Wearable AdapTive Closed loop arcHitectures, NSF grant 1755780 - CRII: CPS: Wearable-Machine Interface Architectures, and NYU start-up funds to R.T.F. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.