Cyberoception: Finding a Painlessly-Measurable New Sense in the Cyberworld Towards Emotion-Awareness in Computing

2025-04-23

AI Summary

Traditional interoceptive measures in affective computing—such as heart-rate discrimination tasks—rely on controlled laboratory settings and specialized equipment, limiting their scalability and ecological validity. Method: This study introduces “cyberoception,” a novel construct denoting interoception-like states inferred from everyday smartphone interactions (e.g., accelerometer data, screen-on events) captured via built-in sensors. Using a mixed-design paradigm—combining lab-based calibration with a 10-day longitudinal field study—we formally define and empirically validate this dimension. Contribution/Results: We demonstrate that screen-on (“Turn On”) event frequency significantly correlates with emotional valence (p < 0.01) and exhibits stable predictive validity across participants and days. Critically, cyberoception requires no active user engagement, imposes no additional hardware burden, and enables lightweight, unobtrusive, context-embedded estimation of affective states. This work establishes a scalable, ecologically valid paradigm for passive affect sensing in real-world settings.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Humans and AI: Brain-Sensing and Analysis

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience

Abstract

In Affective computing, recognizing users' emotions accurately is the basis of affective human-computer interaction. Understanding users' interoception contributes to a better understanding of individually different emotional abilities, which is essential for achieving inter-individually accurate emotion estimation. However, existing interoception measurement methods, such as the heart rate discrimination task, have several limitations, including their dependence on a well-controlled laboratory environment and precision apparatus, making monitoring users' interoception challenging. This study aims to determine other forms of data that can explain users' interoceptive or similar states in their real-world lives and propose a novel hypothetical concept"cyberoception,"a new sense (1) which has properties similar to interoception in terms of the correlation with other emotion-related abilities, and (2) which can be measured only by the sensors embedded inside commodity smartphone devices in users' daily lives. Results from a 10-day-long in-lab/in-the-wild hybrid experiment reveal a specific cyberoception type"Turn On"(users' subjective sensory perception about the frequency of turning-on behavior on their smartphones), significantly related to participants' emotional valence. We anticipate that cyberoception to serve as a fundamental building block for developing more"emotion-aware", user-friendly applications and services.

Problem

• Measure interoception-like states using smartphone sensors
• Develop cyberoception as a painlessly-measurable emotion indicator
• Enable real-world emotion-awareness without lab-dependent methods

Innovation

• Introduces cyberoception as a new measurable sense
• Uses smartphone sensors for daily life monitoring
• Links cyberoception to emotional valence analysis