# Would Motor-Imagery based BCI user training benefit from more women experimenters?

## TL;DR

This study investigates how the gender of experimenters influences the performance and progress of users in mental imagery-based brain-computer interfaces, revealing potential positive effects of women experimenters.

## Contribution

It is the first to examine the impact of experimenter gender on MI-BCI performance and progress, highlighting gender interaction effects.

## Key findings

- Women experimenters may enhance participant progress.
- Gender interactions affect MI-BCI session outcomes.
- Experimenter gender influences user performance over time.

## Abstract

Mental Imagery based Brain-Computer Interfaces (MI-BCI) are a mean to control digital technologies by performing MI tasks alone. Throughout MI-BCI use, human supervision (e.g., experimenter or caregiver) plays a central role. While providing emotional and social feedback, people present BCIs to users and ensure smooth users' progress with BCI use. Though, very little is known about the influence experimenters might have on the results obtained. Such influence is to be expected as social and emotional feedback were shown to influence MI-BCI performances. Furthermore, literature from different fields showed an experimenter effect, and specifically of their gender, on experimental outcome. We assessed the impact of the interaction between experi-menter and participant gender on MI-BCI performances and progress throughout a session. Our results revealed an interaction between participants gender, experimenter gender and progress over runs. It seems to suggest that women experimenters may positively influence partici-pants' progress compared to men experimenters.