Effectiveness of smart wrist wearables for distinguishing physical and cognitive demands

Abstract

Wrist-worn wearables, with sensors to measure physiological responses such as heart rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA), have been increasing and have the potential to be used for continuous monitoring. These devices have been used to detect responses in workers’ physical and cognitive demands; however, the accuracy of wrist wearables for distinguishing these demands is unknown, especially since many every day and work activities frequently require motion. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a wrist-worn wearable in measuring physiological changes during different demand conditions. Participants (n = 20 college students) completed a multi-factor laboratory study that considered task (cognitive/physical), difficulty (easy/hard), and motion (motion/no motion). N-back tasks and stationary bike tasks were used to represent cognitive and physical demands, respectively. Metrics of HRV and EDA were measured using reference-standard devices and a validated wrist-wearable. Significant differences between task, motion, and difficulty were observed from HRV measurements from the reference-standard and wrist-worn devices. Wrist wearables are sensitive to detecting workplace demands and may be used as an alternative to reference-standard sensors for continuous health and activity monitoring for worker health and wellness. Findings in this study can provide guidelines on task and conditions that affect the use and interpretation of wrist-worn devices for measuring cognitive and physical demands in healthcare systems.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Applications for noninvasive, wrist-worn sensors can be used for continuous health and exercise monitoring

• HRV and EDA metrics obtained from wrist-worn device are sensitivity in detecting changes in task, difficulty, and motion

• HRV metric from wrist-worn device had agreement with reference-standard device

• Wrist-wearables has potential for ubiquitous health monitoring of individuals

Keywords:

• Sensor
• heart rate variability
• skin conductance
• measurement
• workload
• sensitivity

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the participants in this study.

Consent and approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board. Written informed consent was obtained from each participant.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

No specific funding was received for this work.