Different strokes for different folks: individual stress response as manifested in typed text

Abstract

Stress is a part of everyday life, but chronic high stress can have psychological and physiological side effects. Systems that can detect harmful levels of stress could assist users in managing their stress and health. However, current assessments are often obtrusive or require specialized equipment. This research leverages attributes of everyday keyboard interactions to proactively and continuously monitor cognitive function. A laboratory study was conducted where typing samples were collected under stress and no-stress conditions. Keystroke and linguistic features were extracted from the samples and models were constructed for each participant. Correct classification rates ranged from 62% to 88% with a mean of 72%.