Technology appears to be increasingly evolving toward context-aware based systems that can readily monitor the environment and signal for changes as necessary. Now, it’s even helping humans become more aware of themselves. Recent developments have included devices that can scan brain activity to detect information overload, or even recognize a person’s mood by observing the way one types or shakes their phone. Staying with mood-sensing technologies, recent work by developers in Saffron Walden, UK has tested a novel emotion-sensing smartphone app that will automatically log a person’s emotional state throughout the day by observing their speech.
The psychological field is in audible need of a way to help monitor the progress of their patients. One important aspect of psychological treatment involves patients keeping a mood diary throughout their day to help psychologists find mood swing triggers. However, those suffering from severe anxiety, depression, or stress tend to forget about their diary. This new smartphone app, called Xpression, would have significant benefits for doctors and patients alike by automatically generating the patient’s mood diary and e-mailing the contents over to them.
Matt Dobson and Duncan Barley, makers of the app and founders of the speech recognition company El Technologies, developed Xpression to monitor the acoustic quality of a person’s voice throughout the day and match the measured data to an emotional state. Through the study of acoustic phonetics, the speed, pitch, and loudness of speech is indicative of a person’s emotional state. Thus, the smartphone app needs to be on all of the time to function properly. It can even observe a person’s voice when they’re talking on the phone - though no words are ever recorded to protect the user’s privacy.
As of now, the Xpression app takes 200ms sound bites and sends them over to a server which analyzes the data and sends back the results for storage. Eventually, the team hopes this process will be integrated into the app.
Similar technology has already been proven in the form of StressSense: a system that identically monitors a person’s speech to detect changing stress levels. However, this system, which will one day be a plug-in for the popular BeWell Android app, must first be trained by recording a person’s voice in a relaxed state. Tests have shown StressSense’s stress detection accuracy to range from 81% indoors to 76% outdoors.
These new context-driven devices can one day prove to be instrumental in treating patients and can generally help people become more aware of themselves. By monitoring emotional responses, businesses can also benefit by tailoring to the specific needs of their customers. It is becoming more evident that technological innovations such as these are being developed to assist the human population in overcoming difficulties.
C
See more news at: