Validation of a Smartphone-Based Approach to In Situ Cognitive Fatigue Assessment

Abstract

BackgroundAcquired Brain Injuries (ABIs) can result in multiple detrimental cognitive effects, such as reduced memory capability, concentration, and planning. These effects can lead to cognitive fatigue, which can exacerbate the symptoms of ABIs and hinder management and recovery. Assessing cognitive fatigue is difficult due to the largely subjective nature of the condition and existing assessment approaches. Traditional methods of assessment use self-assessment questionnaires delivered in a medical setting, but recent work has attempted to employ more objective cognitive tests as a way of evaluating cognitive fatigue. However, these tests are still predominantly delivered within a medical environment, limiting their utility and efficacy.ObjectiveThe aim of this research was to investigate how cognitive fatigue can be accurately assessed in situ, during the quotidian activities of life. It was hypothesized that this assessment could be achieved through the use of mobile assistive technology to assess working memory, sustained attention, information processing speed, reaction time, and cognitive throughput.MethodsThe study used a bespoke smartphone app to track daily cognitive performance, in order to assess potential levels of cognitive fatigue. Twenty-one participants with no prior reported brain injuries took place in a two-week study, resulting in 81 individual testing instances being collected. The smartphone app delivered three cognitive tests on a daily basis: (1) Spatial Span to measure visuospatial working memory; (2) Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) to measure sustained attention, information processing speed, and reaction time; and (3) a Mental Arithmetic Test to measure cognitive throughput. A smartphone-optimized version of the Mental Fatigue Scale (MFS) self-assessment questionnaire was used as a baseline to assess the validity of the three cognitive tests, as the questionnaire has already been validated in multiple peer-reviewed studies.ResultsThe most highly correlated results were from the PVT, which showed a positive correlation with those from the prevalidated MFS, measuring 0.342 (P<.008). Scores from the cognitive tests were entered into a regression model and showed that only reaction time in the PVT was a significant predictor of fatigue (P=.016, F=2.682, 95% CI 9.0-84.2). Higher scores on the MFS were related to increases in reaction time during our mobile variant of the PVT.ConclusionsThe results show that the PVT mobile cognitive test developed for this study could be used as a valid and reliable method for measuring cognitive fatigue in situ. This test would remove the subjectivity associated with established self-assessment approaches and the need for assessments to be performed in a medical setting. Based on our findings, future work could explore delivering a small set of tests with increased duration to further improve measurement reliability. Moreover, as the smartphone assessment tool can be used as part of everyday life, additional sources of data relating to physiological, psycho...

Towards Mobile Cognitive Fatigue Assessment as Indicated by Physical, Social, Environmental, and Emotional Factors

“…Building on the understanding developed during the background review, and in our previously published work [16]- [19] -in which we validated an approach to the in-situ assessment of cognitive fatigue using a set of gamelike tasks delivered using a smartphone -this study aimed to address the research question: which in-situ measures of physical activity, social interaction, location, emotional state and facial landmarks, made using a bespoke smartphone application, could be used to indicate episodes of cognitive fatigue, as measured using our previously validated approach?…”

“…Building on our previous work, that showed the validity of assessing cognitive fatigue using game-like assessment tasks presented on a smartphone [16]- [19], this study aimed to establish which in-situ measures of cognitive fatigue, physical activity, social interaction, location, emotional state and facial landmarks, made using a bespoke smartphone application, could be used to indicate episodes of cognitive fatigue, as measured using our previously validated approach.…”

Training Cognitive Functions Using Mobile Apps in Breast Cancer Patients: Systematic Review

“…Sixteen studies were excluded from the present systematic review because they did not use mobile applications to train cognitive functions [20,43,[52][53][54][55][56][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Eleven studies were excluded because they used mobile applications only to assess -and not to train -cognitive functions [57,58,67,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]. Our eleven selected studies focus on the cognitive domains of attention, memory, problem solving, cognitive control, executive function, visuospatial function, and language (as reported in Table 1).…”

Emotional Drive Wearing your heart on your car

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