The interplay between humans, technology and user authentication: A cognitive processing perspective

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay among human cognitive processing differences (field dependence vs. field independence), alternative interaction device types (desktop vs. touch) and user authentication schemes (textual vs. graphical) towards task completion efficiency and effectiveness. A four-month user study (N=164) was performed under the light of the field dependence-independence theory which underpins human cognitive differences in visual perceptiveness as well as differences in handling contextual information in a holistic or analytic manner. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of results revealed that field independent (FI) users outperformed field dependent users (FD) in graphical authentication, FIs authenticated similarly well on desktop computers as on touch devices, while touch devices negatively affected textual password entry performance of FDs. Users' feedback from a poststudy survey further showed that FD users had memorability issues with graphical authentication and perceived the added difficulty when interacting with textual passwords on touch devices, in contrast to FI users that did not have significant usability and memorability issues on both authentication and interaction device types. Findings highlight the necessity to improve current approaches of knowledge-based user authentication research by incorporating human cognitive factors in both design and run-time. Such an approach is also proposed in this paper.

A Human-Cognitive Perspective of Users’ Password Choices in Recognition-Based Graphical Authentication

“…Their research revealed that users with individual differences in cognitive processing styles (i.e., verbals vs. imagers, field-dependent vs. field-independent) perform significantly different during login with alphanumeric and graphical passwords. Imagers outperformed Verbals (Belk et al, 2013a) and field-independent individuals outperformed field-dependent individuals (Belk et al, 2017a) in login tasks when using a recognition-based GUA scheme. Katsini et al (2018b) revealed that field-independent individuals created stronger passwords when using a recall-based GUA scheme than field-dependent individuals.…”

“…Regarding elementary cognitive processing abilities, Belk et al (2013b) reported that users with enhanced working memory and cognitive processing speed outperformed users with more limited processing abilities during textual and graphical login tasks. Belk et al (2017a) investigated the effects of cognitive processing styles towards users' login performance and memorability of alphanumeric and graphical passwords.…”

“…We used the recognition-based GUA scheme designed by Belk et al (2017a), which is depicted in Figure 1. This mechanism was designed and developed based on the guidelines of well-cited recognition-based GUA mechanisms, such as DejaVu (Dhamija and Perrig, 2000), PassFaces (Brostoff and Sasse, 2000), and ImagePass (Mihajlov and Jerman-Blažič, 2011).…”

“…However, GUA is an information processing task, and thus, individual cognitive characteristics are expected to have an impact on the way the users create their graphical passwords. Regarding human cognition, current research is limited to investigating memorability issues in the login phase (Belk et al, 2017a). However, considering that the strength of the chosen graphical password is determined during password composition, it is important to investigate the effect of individual cognitive differences in the registration phase.…”

Multi-Factor Authentication: A Survey

“…The work in [156] offered an overview on how to make the passwords memorable while keeping them relatively usable and secure at the same time. Paper by Belk et al [157] delivered a research on the task completion efficiency and effectiveness among the conventional passwords and the realistic ones. The results revealed that, for most of the participants, the utilization of graphic passwords requires more time than for the textual ones.…”