Correlation between Unconscious Mouse Actions and Human Cognitive Workload

TL;DR

This study investigates the link between unconscious mouse movements and human cognitive workload, showing that mouse behaviors can predict cognitive load levels through statistical analysis and validation with other modalities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of unconscious mouse actions as indicators of cognitive workload, validated with multiple data sources.

Findings

Unconscious mouse behaviors correlate with cognitive workload levels.

Mouse movements can predict cognitive load during tasks.

Validation confirms the relationship with eye blinking and questionnaires.

Abstract

Unconscious behaviors are one of the indicators of the human perception process from a psychological perspective. As a result of perception responses, hand gestures show behavioral responses from given stimuli. Mouse usages in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) show hand gestures that individuals perceive information processing. This paper presents an investigation of the correlation between unconscious mouse actions and human cognitive workload. We extracted mouse behaviors from a Robot Operating System (ROS) file-based dataset that user responses are reproducible. We analyzed redundant mouse movements to complete a dual $n$-back game by solely pressing the left and right buttons. Starting from a hypothesis that unconscious mouse behaviors predict different levels of cognitive loads, we statistically analyzed mouse movements. We also validated mouse behaviors with other modalities in the dataset, including self-questionnaire and eye blinking results. As a result, we found that mouse behaviors that occur unconsciously and human cognitive workload correlate.