Biofeedback Games and The Placebo Effect

vrml writes In medicine, it is well-known that sugar pills sometimes produce the same effects as real drugs (Placebo Effect). But could that happen with computers too? The first scientific study of the Placebo Effect in computing, just published by the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies , gives an affirmative answer. The experiment considered affective computing, that is those fancy applications that claim to know user's emotions by detecting physiological parameters with sensors. Researchers took two well-known affective computing systems and used them to control in real-time the state of an avatar that looked more and more nervous as users' stress level increased, and more and more relaxed as it decreased. But they also considered a third system in which, unbeknown to users, the sensors were disconnected from the computer and the avatar state was controlled by a random stream of physiological data instead of the real user's data. Results show that participants believed that the sham application was able to display their stress level. Even worse, only one of the two (costly) affective computing systems produced better results than the placebo. This suggests that evaluations of such novel computer applications should include also a placebo condition, as it is routinely done in medicine but not yet in computer science.

Comments

Or maybe it works the other way arround

[erice]

The emotional state of the player is influenced by what he sees on the screen.

Re:Or maybe it works the other way arround

[Livius]

It sounds like highly subjective inferences are unreliable and indistinguishable from background randomness.

Which has nothing to do with the placebo effect.

Re:Or maybe it works the other way arround

[Mr0bvious]

I think the reference to the placebo effect it the users belief that the system can understand their emotions and not about if, why or how the devices fail.

The author also seems to suggest that the study/awareness of the placebo effect is only routinely used in medicine, but it's the one of the reasons why double blind tests are used and they are used in many industries besides medicine, including computer science.

Therapeutic Use

[Scottingham]

I wonder if this effect could be used therapeutically. Have the biofeedback and all, but maybe provide a nudge/bias towards stress relief...

But then, that's not much better than putting crystals over a client's (rube's) body to let the negatons out.

Re:could be used therapeutically

[TaoPhoenix]

The Placebo Effect is just our poor bodies reaching some limits vs more and more clever scientific studies.

As I understood it, it was self healing abilities only triggered by "someone gives a damn about me" that we don't easily access every day to fix other problems.

So having computer programs just goes more towards the whole "look, it's now on a computer" we've seen in darker scenarios. I'll stay positive on this note.

If you just stick 300 fortune cookies into a computer program, a few of them will strike home and then you get "therapeutic benefit". (I know, because I have a file of over a hundred of them, from asking my Chinese restaurant to give me a bunch each time. A few of them are really pretty good.)

Studies keep trying to go super narrow to carefully limit "complexity" but I am beginning to think the "Scientific Method" is on the verge of missing "Emergent Results" when they risk small details but leave behind controlling micro-scenarios.

Sideways from the Slashdot tradition, I didn't read the article because one look at the summary says it's too narrow, and it's become the Press's job to "expand them". Some journalists try hard, a few are hacks.

Much more broadly, I have smashed together a few projects I know have helped me.

What if...

[sd4f]

I wonder if this has any implications for internet crap that goes viral. Reason for it is, that so much stuff has gone silly, but I am never able to discern why, it always seems just stupid to me like gangnam style or the old spice commercial. It would be interesting to see if people were led to believe it was going viral, would it change their opinion, as opposed to just regular crap on the internet which goes nowhere. Is this a case of placebo effect as well, where people are told to like something because everyone else does, if you remove the everyone else and telling aspect, would the same content matter?

Re:Lie detector

[stephanruby]

Lie detectors are fine if you understand their limits, and what the results mean.

I feel the same way about fortune tellers. Most fortunes told are fine if you understand their limits, and what their results mean.

Thankfully, I'm smart enough to know all of that, because I've actually studied fortune telling just like you must have studied lie detectors and you could say I've become quite the authority on the subject of fortune telling and writing fortune cookies.

Or how about the USEFUL information?

[drinkypoo]

I'd like two know which two systems aren't bullshit