Predicting the Three Major Dimensions of the Learner-s Emotions from Brainwaves

This paper investigates how the use of machine learning techniques can significantly predict the three major dimensions of learner’s emotions (pleasure, arousal and dominance) from brainwaves. This study has adopted an experimentation in which participants were exposed to a set of pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) while their electrical brain activity was recorded with an electroencephalogram (EEG). The pictures were already rated in a previous study via the affective rating system Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) to assess the three dimensions of pleasure, arousal, and dominance. For each picture, we took the mean of these values for all subjects used in this previous study and associated them to the recorded brainwaves of the participants in our study. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed the hypothesis that brainwave measures could significantly predict emotional dimensions. This can be very useful in the case of impassive, taciturn or disabled learners. Standard classification techniques were used to assess the reliability of the automatic detection of learners’ three major dimensions from the brainwaves. We discuss the results and the pertinence of such a method to assess learner’s emotions and integrate it into a brainwavesensing Intelligent Tutoring System. Keywords—Algorithms, Brainwaves, Emotional dimensions, Performance.