Abstract

Security surveillance is frequently used to increase public safety. Characteristics of the surveillance rooms, however, pose many cognitive challenges pertaining to distraction and interruptions, which may affect surveillance performance. Affective computing could represent a potential solution. It involves the recognition and the interpretation of human states using, for instance, different psychophysiological measures. As a first step toward this goal, the present study aimed at assessing whether cardiac and electrodermal activity, could be used as potential markers of interruptions and distraction during a surveillance simulation. A total of 126 participants went through a simulation involving four 8-min scenarios using a high-fidelity urban security surveillance microworld. Task interruption in the form of a realistic secondary task to perform and distraction in the form of background noise representative of a busy operational centre were also implemented into the simulation. Different features of the electrocardiographic (ECG) signal varied with the presence of distraction, but also as a function of time on task. Electrodermal (EDA) features mainly varied as a function of time. These results suggest that distraction and time on task specifically impacted cognitive functioning, potentially increasing sympathetic activity through cognitive workload, and that EDA and ECG measures may represent relevant markers to use from an affective computing perspective to particularly pinpoint periods of distraction and hypovigilance. Implications for the development of user-adaptive systems are discussed.