The Need for Assistants that Monitor Cognitive Abilities

Many modern occupations require workers to spend a significant portion of their time operating computers. Some may see this as a potential problem (e.g., Internet addiction or repetitive stress injuries) while others may see this as an opportunity (e.g., increased productivity). From both points of view, we can make a case for the need to monitor and analyze the interactions of people and the computers they use. The data gleaned from these interactions can be used to increase the productivity of the person/computer pair, to reduce the cost and number of errors resulting from the collaboration, to detect the ill-effects of extensive computer use, and to detect changes in other abilities that manifest themselves as changes in computer use. A common viewpoint for personal assistants centers around the question of which tasks the assistant can perform for (or in partnership with) the user. This short paper argues that we need to expand this viewpoint to include personal assistants that monitor and report back on the user’s performance. In support of this argument, we will enumerate specific uses and benefits of monitoring the cognitive abilities of computer users through human-computer-interaction and map these benefits to specific occupations and populations. We focus on one particular population: older adults experiencing or concerned about cognitive decline.