A short review and primer on respiration in human computer interaction applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews the role of respiration in human-computer interaction, emphasizing its analysis, control, and application in everyday interfaces, serving as a primer for newcomers in psychophysiology.

Contribution

It provides a concise overview of respiration's application in HCI, highlighting its unique aspects and practical considerations for designing interactive systems.

Findings

Respiration rate correlates with engagement and attention.

Conscious control of respiration impacts HCI design.

Respiration analysis is often combined with cardiovascular signals.

Abstract

The application of psychophysiology in human-computer interaction is a growing field with significant potential for future smart personalised systems. Working in this emerging field requires comprehension of an array of physiological signals and analysis techniques. Respiration is unique among physiological signals in that it can be consciously controlled which has to be taken into account when designing applications. Respiration is tightly connected to other physiological signals, especially cardiovascular activity, and often analyzed in conjunction with other signals. When analyzed separately, an increase in the rate of respiration can be seen as an increase in metabolic demand which indicates activate states such as engagement and attention. We present a short review on the application of respiration in human-computer interaction. This paper aims to serve as a primer for the novice, enabling rapid familiarisation with the latest core concepts. We put special emphasis on everyday human-computer interface applications to distinguish from the more common clinical or sports uses of psychophysiology. This paper is an extract from a comprehensive review of the entire field of ambulatory psychophysiology, including 12 similar chapters, plus application guidelines and systematic review. Thus any citation should be made using the following reference: B. Cowley, M. Filetti, K. Lukander, J. Torniainen, A. Henelius, L. Ahonen, O. Barral, I. Kosunen, T. Valtonen, M. Huotilainen, N. Ravaja, G. Jacucci. The Psychophysiology Primer: a guide to methods and a broad review with a focus on human-computer interaction. Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 9, no. 3-4, pp. 150--307, 2016.