A Review of Cognitive Readiness, Wearable Devices, and Prospects
Tasnim Irtifa Chowdhury, Andrew Vargo, Chris Blakely, Benjamin Tag, Koichi Kise
TL;DR
The paper addresses the challenge of objectively assessing cognitive readiness in real-world settings using wearable sensors. It synthesizes a broad spectrum of physiological measures—cardiovascular, neurooculomuscular, electrodermal, respiratory, ocular, musculoskeletal, neural, and metabolic—along with sensing techniques and wearables to map signals to cognitive readiness components. A central contribution is the proposal of a robust, extensible catalog of cognitive readiness measurements and a situational framework to tailor measures to specific tasks or environments, enabling personalized interventions and in-the-wild monitoring. This work highlights the potential for real-time, multi-modal assessment to improve human–computer interaction, training, safety, and performance, while acknowledging variability, device limitations, and privacy considerations as critical design factors.
Abstract
In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Ubiquitous Computing, the objective of optimizing device interactions and personalizing user experiences has placed a new emphasis on accurately evaluating cognitive readiness using wearable devices. Interpreting cognitive readiness in real-world scenarios is complex due to the plethora of potential physiological measures, individual variability, and the limitations of wearable devices. In this review, we present a systematic overview of key physiological measures that can be used for an in-depth assessment of cognitive readiness. These measures can serve as proxies for detailed assessments of cognitive readiness. This review serves as a tool for assessing cognitive readiness for diverse applications, with special focus on in-the-wild research settings. In addition, due to the complexity of measurements and devices, we propose the development of robust catalog for cognitive readiness measurements.