Unconscious load changer: Designing method to subtly influence load perception by simply presenting modified myoelectricity sensor information

Abstract

Systems of presenting myoelectricity sensor information allow users to understand the body's load for various purposes, such as medical rehabilitation and sports training. If there is a method to create the psychological phenomenon of unconsciously increasing or decreasing a user's load perception simply by changing how to present the myoelectricity sensor values, it will help design a more effective system. Therefore, we propose a method to manipulate load perception by presenting modified myoelectricity sensor information. The proposed method aims to induce higher or lower load perception by modifying the actual myoelectric value to a higher or lower value. We implemented a prototype system and evaluated our method for the two types of load perception of weight perception and fatigue perception when handling objects. The result showed that most subjects unconsciously increased or decreased their load perception to match the presented myoelectric value, while the minority subjects got the opposite response from the majority subjects. This result indicates the feasibility of user assistance systems that use this phenomenon for a good purpose, such as systems that slightly reduce the load perception during physical activity. On the other hand, this result also indicates the feasibility of systems that use this phenomenon for a bad purpose, such as systems that increase user's fatigue to harm user's activity. This study provides helpful findings for designing and using sensor information presentation systems considering the psychological phenomenon.

Augmented Cognition Compass: A Taxonomy of Cognitive Augmentations

“…Similarly, the rejection of other types of augmentations apart from the cognitive ones could have excluded some hybrid cases (e.g., a cognitive augmentation for a physical limitation, like in Futami, et al [27]).…”

Unconscious Other’s Impression Changer: A Method to Manipulate Cognitive Biases That Subtly Change Others’ Impressions Positively/Negatively by Making AI Bias in Emotion Estimation AI

“…To manipulate the elapsed time sensation, some methods use tactile stimuli using wristworn devices [10,34], auditory stimuli of information devices [35], and visual icons on a head-mounted display [11,36]. To manipulate load perception such as fatigue and weight of things, there is a method that presents myoelectricity sensor information that differs from the actual measured sensor value [15,37] and a method that changes the appearance color of the object to be lifted [38]. To manipulate the user's feeling of fullness, there is a method that changes the visual size of food to eat with VR (Narumi et al [39]) and a method that changes the apparent size of the plate (Adams et al [6]).…”

“…(1) First, because computer information presentation can unintentionally affect human cognition and psychology due to unconscious phenomena (e.g., cognitive biases, psychological effects, and illusions), many recent studies have shown the importance of understanding the existence and manipulation methods of such unconscious phenomena [6][7][8][9][10][11]. For example, a previous study of information presentation systems for wearable biosensors discovered a phenomenon in which the user's mind and body unconsciously changes in accordance with the presented sensor value, even if the sensor value is different from the actual value due to a bias in the sensor value presentation algorithm (e.g., changes in anxiety with heart rate sensor presentation [12][13][14], changes in physical load with myoelectric sensor presentation [15]). The previous study also discovered a method that presents modified sensor value (i.e., false value ) to manipulate this phenomenon, which indicated that this phenomenon and method could be used for good to support the user and could be misused to harm the user.…”