MEASURING COGNITIVE LOAD

• US 20110207099A1
• Filed: 09/29/2009
• Published: 08/25/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: National ICT Australia Limited
• Original Assignee: National ICT Australia Limited
• Inventors: Chen, Fang, Choi, Eric, Khawaja, Muhammad Asif
• Granted Patent: US 9,737,255 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/236
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/16 Devices for psychotechnics using teaching or educational appliances G09B1/00 - G09B7/00; Testing reaction times ; Devices for evaluating the psychological state
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4803 Speech analysis specially adapted for diagnostic purposes
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7264 Classification of physiological signals or data, e.g. using neural networks, statistical classifiers, expert systems or fuzzy systems neural networks per se G06N3/00; expert systems per se G06N5/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7267 involving training the classification device
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7475 User input or interface means, e.g. keyboard, pointing device, joystick
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1815 Semantic context, e.g. disambiguation of the recognition hypotheses based on word meaning
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems

Abstract

This invention concerns measuring cognitive load. A word based input is produced by a person while performing a task (100). Predetermined grammatical features of the word based input are identified (104). Then, the identified grammatical features are weighted and combined to provide a measure indicating the person'"'"'s cognitive load (106). The use of grammatical features represents a divergence from the known methods of providing a measure of a person'"'"'s cognitive load. It is an advantage of the invention that by concentrating on the grammatical features it is able to provide an objective, non-intrusive measure of the person'"'"'s cognitive load. Aspects the invention include a method, a computer system and software that are used to perform the method.

Claims

1. A method for measuring a person'"'"'s cognitive load, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving word based input produced by a person while performing a task;

(b) identifying predetermined grammatical features of the word based input; and

(c) weighting and combining the identified grammatical features to provide a measure indicating the person'"'"'s cognitive load.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of classifying the task.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the predetermined grammatical features of step (b) are particular features relevant to that task classification.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the predetermined grammatical features of step (b) include any one or more of:

identification of the number and types of nouns, pronouns, pronouns, propositions, and verbs;

identification of number and types of grammatical errors made;

identification of the number and types of a particular syntax or grammatical structures;

identification of the number and types of particular words and/or phrases at specific sentence and/or paragraph positions;

identification of the number of shorter or longer (i.e. six letters) words and/or sentences;

identification of pauses (silent or filled) at particular sentence and/or paragraph positions; and

identification of semantics, meanings and interpretation of the words and/or sentences.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the word based input is produced from speech of the person when performing the task.

6. The method according to claim 2, wherein the method further comprises classifying the task based on predetermined task and/or person profiles.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the word based input of step (a) is text input that is typed by the person when performing the task.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein step (c) is based on the task and/or person classification.

12. Software operable when installed on a computer that can interface with a person to perform the method of measuring the person'"'"'s cognitive load according to claim 1.

9. The method may further comprise the step of receiving physiological input about the person while performing the task and/or environmental data about the environment of the person while performing the task.

10. A computer system to measure a person'"'"'s cognitive load while performing a task comprising:

a receiver to receive word based input produced by a person while performing the task; and

a classifier to identify predetermined grammatical features of the word based input; and

a combiner to weight and combine the identified features to provide a measure indicating the person'"'"'s cognitive load.

11. A computer system according to claim 10, wherein the person interacts with the computer system to perform the task.