arrow
Return

Tracking Dynamic Flow: Decoding Flow Fluctuations Through Performance in a Fine Motor Control Task

delete2025-04-01
delete0
delete
OA
AI
B
Bohao Tian
S
Shijun Zhang
S
Sirui Chen
张玉茹 (Yuru Zhang)
彭凯平 cover
彭凯平 (Kaiping Peng)
H
Hongxing Zhang
D
Dangxiao Wang
DOI:10.1109/TAFFC.2024.3480309delete
deleteOriginal
deleteOriginal request for help
deleteShare
deleteSave
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Flow, an optimal mental state merging action and awareness, significantly impacts our emotion, performance, and well-being. However, capturing its swift transitions on a fine timescale is challenging due to the sparsity of the existing flow detecting tools. Here we present a fine fingertip force control (F<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>C) task to induce flow, wherein the task challenge is set at a compatible level with personal skill, and to quantitatively track the flow state variations from synchronous motor control performance. We select eight performance metrics from fingertip force sequence and reveal their significant differences under distinct self-reported flow states. Further, we built a machine learning-based decoder that aims to predict the continuous flow intensity during the user experiment through the performance metrics, taking the self-reported flow as the label. Cross-validation shows that the predicted flow intensity reaches significant correlation with the self-reported flow intensity (<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">r</i> = 0.81). Based on the decoding results, we can capture the flow fluctuations during the intervals between sparse self-reporting probes. This study showcases the feasibility of tracking intrinsic flow variations with high temporal resolution using task performance measures and may serve as foundation for future work aiming to take advantage of flow's dynamics to enhance performance and positive emotions.
Keywords:
Flow experience
intrinsic fluctuations
fine fingertip force control
task performance
cross validation
dynamics

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing cover
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
IF:
9.8
Papers:
1.3K
Citations:
9.1K

Organization

B
Beijing Institute of Life Omics
Scholars:
1
Papers: 1
Citations: 0
B
Beihang University
Scholars:
5.1W
Papers: 4.1W
Citations: 37
T
tsinghua university
Scholars:
11.8W
Papers: 10.0W
Citations: 137
researcher View more organizations