A description of my research project and goals, and more information about us.
The goal of this research is to investigate the physiological synchrony between paramedic trainee pairs in training situations. Understanding physiological synchrony (i.e., the unconscious, dynamic linking of physiological responses such as heart rate and electrodermal activity) in working dyads is important because it can have an effect on the fatigue and stress levels of the dyad’s performance in carrying out life-saving tasks. While moderate stress can improve cognitive performance, severe stress can reduce fine motor performance and attention. Individuals’ physiological responses have been well-linked to several affective and mental states of humans, such as arousal and cognitive load [4]. The use of physiological signals, particularly electrodermal activity (EDA), to monitor the stress response in human behavior has several additional advantages. For instance, physiological responses provide us with a continuous measure, and the emerging generation of wearables allows us to collect data non-invasively and unobtrusively. In the context of teams or pairs, physiological synchrony has given us insight about human-human interaction, such as level of social engagement, coordinated behavior, and team performance. We propose to extend this line of work by looking at what EDA data can tell us about pairs working in real-life high-stake situations, as opposed to social situations or manufactured, low-stake activities. Our study monitors the EDA of paramedic trainees as they work in realistic simulated emergency situations. Using the Empatica E4 wristband, we have collected EDA data from 8 team-training simulations (n=16). We plan to extract features that will give us insight into the physiological synchrony of the pairs. Based on prior work, we will look at individual features of the EDA data (e.g., minimum, maximum, average, STD, number of peaks, and peak amplitude) as well as team level features (differences in numbers of peaks, and canonical correlation). From initial analysis, we have already noticed a level of correlation between team members’ EDA in a significant number of the sessions. We hope that this study will give us better insight into how the physiological responses of two people working together can affect both their own and their teammates’ stress level and task performance.