Gido Hakvoort

Social Interaction in a Cooperative Brain-computer Interface Game

Does using a brain-computer interface (BCI) influence the social interaction between people when playing a cooperative game? By measuring the amount of speech, utterances, instrumental gestures and empathic gestures during a cooperative game where two participants had to reach a certain goal, and questioning participants about their own experience afterwards this study attempts to provide answers to this question. The results showed that social interaction changed when using a BCI compared to using a mouse. There was a higher amount of utterances and empathic gestures. This indicates that the participants reacted more to the higher difficulty of the BCI selection method. Participants also reported that they felt they cooperated better during the use of the mouse.

Evaluating user experience in a selection based brain-computer interface game a comparative study: a comparative study

In human-computer interaction, it is important to offer the users correct modalities for particular tasks and situations. Unless the user has the suitable modality for a task, neither task performance nor user experience can be optimised. The aim of this study is to assess the appropriateness of using a steady-state visually evoked potential based brain-computer interface (BCI) for selection tasks in a computer game. In an experiment participants evaluated a BCI control and a comparable automatic speech recogniser (ASR) control in terms of workload, usability and engagement. The results showed that although BCI was a satisfactory modality in completing selection tasks, its use in our game was not engaging for the player. In our particular setup, ASR control appeared to be a better alternative to BCI control.