Towards a Standardization in the Use of Physiological Signals for Affective Recognition Systems

The implementation of physiological signals, as an approach for emotion recognition in computer systems, is not a straight forward task. This paper discusses five main areas that lack of standards and guided principles, which have led HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) researchers to take critical decisions about (i) models, (ii) stimulus, (iii) measures, (iv) features and (v) algorithms with some degree of uncertainty about their results. Methodology standardization would allow comparison of results, reusability of findings and easier integration of the various affective recognition systems created. The background theory is given for each of the five areas and the related work from psychology is briefly reviewed. A comparison table of the HCI common approaches of the five discussed areas is presented, and finally some considerations to take the best decisions are discussed. The aim of this paper is to provide directions on which the future research efforts for affective recognition in HCI should be focused on.