The Relationship between Psychological distress and human computer interaction arameters : linear or non-linear?

Abstract

During a survey based study, it has been revealed that psychological distress is reflected in theway computer users interact with computers. Based on the feedback of the subjects, the typesof stress-reflector interactions were also identified. However, the specific interactions relatedto the stress, the nature of the relationship between the identified‘stress-reflectors’and theactual level of psychological distress was yet to be investigated. Accordingly, the initialsurvey was then followed by a series of activities with the objective of uncovering the natureof the relationship exists between the two. Initially, the most frequented interaction behaviorsof computer users under stress were identified. Secondly these behaviors were recorded usinga background analyzer together with a simultaneous measure of the distress level of therelevant computer user. Finally, behavior measures of individuals were mapped with theirpersonal distress scores, producing the dataset using which the nature of correlations wereexplored. This paper presents the work carried out during this exploration, keeping theinitial focus on linear methods, and provides justifications for the claim: The relationshipbetween the distress score and the human computer interaction parameters is non-linear