Past Issues

The purpose of this work is to suggest the optimal color temperature, which induces a sense of comfort for autonomous vehicle users through the analysis of biosignal using electroencephalography (EEG) and photoplethysmography (PPG). To achieve this purpose, we applied lighting with a color temperature of 3000 K, 4000 K, 5000 K, and 6000 K to the autonomous driving environment. We experimented in a laboratory equipped with a graphic driving simulator. The experimental procedure is as follows: 1) stabilization (5 min). 2) Uchida-Kraepelin test (3 min). 3) Automatic driving + lighting (3 min). This procedure was repeated four times under different color temperatures. We performed frequency analysis on a collected time-series data and calculated the power value for each frequency band through power spectrum analysis. In the case of EEG, we analyzed α- and β-waves, which are indicators of stability and arousal, respectively. In the case of PPG, we analyzed the sympathetic nervous system activity. To reduce deviations between the subjects, we normalized the data before analysis. The result of the first analysis revealed that α-wave increased only at 5000 K, while the β-wave increased at almost all color temperatures. In addition, in the case of PPG, sympathetic nervous system activity (SNSA) increased under driving conditions. The result of the second analysis revealed that the difference between β-wave and SNSA is insignificant. In conclusion, the increase in α-waves showed that EEG was most stable at 5000 K. The results of this study can be applied to the upcoming autonomous driving era to induce high driver satisfaction. Furthermore, this approach could eventually lead to the acceptance of autonomous vehicles by suggesting a positive effect of autonomous driving.

keyword : Autonomous Vehicle, EEG, PPG, Color Temperature, Interior Lighting, 자율주행자동차, 뇌파, 맥파, 색온도, 실내조명

This study aimed to investigate the association between asthma and emotions, such as depression, stress, and health awareness. We observed the effects of blood indices on asthma in Korean adults. Data from 5852 adults were taken from the 2017 Seventh Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and analyzed using a multivariate logistic regression model. The probability of asthma occurrence in over 65 years old was higher than in 19-44 years old (OR = 1.48), and asthma occurrence was high in subjects with low educational (OR = 1.89) and income (OR = 2.07) levels. With regard to marital status, singleness and divorce and dye were found to have increased the probability of asthma occurrence by 1.62- and 2.30-folds, respectively. The restriction of activities was another factor that increased with asthma occurrence (OR = 2.39). In terms of emotions, general health awareness was significantly 3.45 times increased the probability of asthma occurrence at their health bad awareness. Furthermore, depression (OR = 1.782) was shown to have increased asthma occurrence. The blood index of C-CRP 1.12 times increased the probability of asthma occurrence. The factors that influenced asthma occurrence were age, education, income, marital status, the restriction of activities, general health awareness, depression, and C-CRP. Emotional factors and blood indices are potential risk factors for the development of asthma in Korean adults. By understanding the increased risks of asthma occurrence with general characteristics and emotional factors and blood indices, the management and prevention of asthma should include the management of emotional factors.

keyword : Asthma, Korea National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey, Physiological Indicator, Psychological Factor, 천식, 국민건강영양조사, 생리적 건강지표, 심리적 요인

Loneliness is an unpleasant experience due to the human need for social connection. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, and intentions to nonhuman entities. The inverse process of anthropomorphism is dehumanization in which individuals treat humans like animals or objects. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether relationships exist among loneliness, anthropomorphism, and dehumanization. In Study 1, loneliness was measured via self-reports, and an anthropomorphism task was introduced to examine the extent to which subjective experiences of loneliness related to the tendency to describe nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics. According to the results, lonelier participants attributed more humanlike capacities to computers and cats. Study 2 examined whether significant differences emerged in anthropomorphism and dehumanization between the experimental condition of loneliness and the control condition. After having been induced to the emotion of loneliness using an experimental writing task, the participants tended to perceive nonhuman agents to be more humanlike in the condition of loneliness than in the control condition. Moreover, there was a stronger tendency of dehumanization toward other humans in the condition of loneliness than in the control condition. There was also higher levels of negatively biased perceptions of neighborhood characteristics. This scenario implies that anthropomorphism is related to sociality motivation, which is the need for social connection through establishing bonds with nonhumans, and may result in the dehumanization and emotional experiences of other humans.

keyword : Loneliness, Anthropomorphism, Dehumanization, The Need for Social Connection, 외로움, 의인화, 비인간화, 사회적 연결 욕구

This study aimed to investigate the changes of emotional perception biases according to the level of social phobia and the relationship with visuospatial attention allocation ability. This study used the Korean self-report assessment test (Korean version of social avoidance and distress, K-SAD) to measure the level of social phobia. Moreover, the emotional perception and useful field of view (UFOV) tasks were employed for measuring emotional perception biases and visuospatial attention allocation ability, respectively. A total of 118 participants participated in this experiment, and only 107 (males: 94, females: 13) data were analyzed due to the exclusion of response errors and other statistical problems. The average age of the participants used in the analysis was 21 years (SD: 3.64), and those participants were divided into three groups according to the K-SAD scores. Consequently, all experimental groups showed negative emotional perception biases in the emotional perception task, but the magnitudes of the biases of each group were not significantly different. Furthermore, the positive emotional perception biases were higher at higher levels of social phobia, which could be related to the tendency of interpreting positive stimuli negatively. In the UFOV task, the higher the level of social phobia, the lower the visuospatial attention allocation ability. These results suggest that the deterioration of visuospatial attention allocation ability potentially contributes to the increase of positive emotional perception biases by being difficult to perceive external stimuli. Thus, this paper discusses the potential contribution of visuospatial attention allocation ability to the increased perceptual biases of positive emotions as the level of social phobia increases.

keyword : Social Phobia, Emotion Perception Ability, Visuo-Spatial Attention Allocation Ability, Self-Reported Assessment Test, 사회공포증, 정서지각능력, 시공간 주의배분능력, 자기보고형 검사

This study aimed to develop a modular smart clothing system for heart rate monitoring that reduces the inconvenience caused by battery charging and the large size of measurement devices. The heart rate monitoring system was modularized into a temporary device and a continuous device to enable heart rate monitoring depending on the requirement. The temporary device with near-field communication (NFC) and heart rate sensors was developed as a clothing attachment type that enables heart rate monitoring via smart phone tagging when required. The continuous device is based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication and batteries and was developed to enable continuous heart rate measurement via a direct connection to the temporary device. Furthermore, the temporary device was configured to connect with a textile electrode made of a silver-based knitted fabric designed to be located below the pectoralis major muscle for heart rate measurement. Considering the user-experience factors, key functions, and the ease of use, we developed an application to automatically log through smart phone tagging to improve usability. To evaluate the accuracy of the heart rate measurement, we recorded the heart rate of 10 healthy male subjects with a modular smart clothing system and compared the results with the heart rate values measured by the Polar RS800. Consequently, the average heart rate value measured by the temporary system was 85.37, while that measured by the reference device was 87.03, corresponding to an accuracy of 96.73%. No significant difference was found in comparison with the reference device (T value = -1.892, p = .091). Similarly, the average heart rate measured by the continuous system was 86.00, while that measured by the reference device was 86.97, corresponding to an accuracy of 97.16%. No significant difference was found in terms of the heart rate value between the two signals (T value = 1.089, p = .304). The significance of this study is to develop and validate a modular clothing system that can measure heart rates according to the purpose of the user. The developed modular smart clothing system for heart rate monitoring enables dual product planning by reducing the price increase due to unnecessary functions.

keyword : Heart Rate Monitoring, Modular Smart Clothing System, Temporary Device, Continuous Device, NFC, Near Field Communication, 심박 측정, 모듈형 스마트 의류 시스템, 목적형 기기, 지속형 기기

Voice user interface has become a commercially viable and extensive interaction mechanism with the development of voice assistants. Despite the popularity of voice assistants, the academic community does not utterly understand about what, when, and how users chat with them. Chatting with a voice assistant is crucial as it defines how a user will seek the help of the assistant in the future. This study aims to cover the essence and construct of conversational AI, to develop a classification method to deal with user utterances, and, most importantly, to understand about what, when, and how Chinese users chat with voice assistants. We collected user utterances from the real conventional database of a commercial voice assistant, NetEase Sing in China. We also identified different utterance categories on the basis of previous studies and real usage conditions and annotated the utterances with 17 labels. Furthermore, we found that the three top reasons for the usage of voice assistants in China are the following: (1) greeting, (2) function, and (3) music. Chinese users like to interact with voice assistants at night from 7 PM to 10 PM, and they are polite toward the assistants. The whole percentage of negative feedback utterances is less than 6%, which is considerably low. These findings appear to be useful in voice interaction designs for intelligent hardware.

keyword : Voice Interaction Design, Chat, Chinese User, Intelligent Hardware

Given the development of information technology, various methods for efficient information delivery have been constructed as the method of delivering product information moves from offline and 2D to online and 3D. These attempts not only are about delivering product information in an online space where no real product exists but also play a crucial role in diversifying and revitalizing online shopping by providing virtual experiences to consumers. 360 product image is a photorealistic VR that allows a subject to be rotated and photographed to view objects in three dimensions. 360 product image has also attracted considerable attention considering that it can deliver richer information about an object compared with the existing still image photography. 360 product image is influenced by divergent production factors, and accordingly, a difference emerges in the responses of users. However, as the history of technology is short, related research is also insufficient. Therefore, this study aimed to grasp the responses of users, which vary depending on the type of products and the number of source images in the 360 product image process. To this end, a representative product among the product groups that can be frequently found in online shopping malls was selected to produce a 360 product image and experiment with 75 users. The emotional responses to the 360 product image were analyzed through an experimental questionnaire to which the semantic classification method was applied. The results of this study could be used as basic data to understand and grasp the sensitivity of consumers to 360 product image.

keyword : 360 Product Image, Stereoscopic Image, Virtual Reality, Object VR, Emotional Language, Semantic Classification Scale, 360 제품 이미지, 입체영상, 가상현실, 오브젝트 VR, 감성언어, 의미분별척도

Consumers purchase gifts for themselves and for others. This research examined whether one’s preferred purchase type (material or experiential) would depend on the gift recipient (self or others). A total of 200 participants took part in online studies via Amazon Mechanical-Turk. Based on the construal-level theory, people will focus on concrete product attributes for psychologically close objects; however, for psychologically distant objects, people will concentrate on abstract product attributes. Study 1 demonstrated that participants preferred material over experiential purchases in self-gifting situations, while they preferred experiential compared to material gifts for others. In Study 2, it was found that individual differences in emotional disconnection moderated the effect of gift recipient on preferred gift type. Specifically, the differences in preferred gift type increased as one’s emotional disconnection level increased. The results of this research have theoretical implications in terms of extending construal-level theory to gift-purchasing behaviors. Furthermore, this research has practical implications for marketers and advertisers. Limitations and possible future research directions were also discussed.

keyword : Gift Purchases, Self-gifting, Material Gifts, Experiential Gifts, Emotional Disconnection, 선물 구매, 자신을 위한 선물, 물질재 선물, 경험재 선물, 감정적 단절 수준

Using driving simulation, this study investigated the effects of driver’s trust in the adaptive cruise control (ACC) system and road density on driver’s workload and situation awareness. The drivers were allocated into one of four experimental conditions manipulated by ACC system trust level (trust-increased vs. trust-decreased) and road congestion (high vs. low). The workload and situational awareness of the participants were measured as dependent variables. The results showed followings. First, trust-decreased group for the ACC system had significantly lower trust scores for the system in all of the measurement items, including reducing the driving load and securing safe driving due to the use of this system, than the trust-increased group. Second, the trust-decreased group showed a slower reaction time in the secondary tasks and higher subjective workload than trust-increased group. Third, in contrast, the situational awareness for the driving situation was significantly higher in the trust-decreased group than trust-increased group. The results of this study showed that the driver’s trust in the ACC system can affect the various information processing performed while driving. Also, these results suggest that trust in the user’s system should be considered as an important variable in the design of an automated driving assistance system.

keyword : System Trust, Adaptive Cruise Control, Traffic Density, Situation Awareness, Workload, Driving Simulation, 시스템 신뢰, 적응형 정속 주행 시스템, 도로 혼잡도, 상황인식, 작업부하, 운전 시뮬레이션