Using Smart Eyewear to Sense Electrodermal Activity While
Reading
Christopher Kim

chris.kim@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio Media Design
Japan

Jiawen Han

George Chernyshovzheng208@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio Media DesignJapan

Kai Kunzechernyshov@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio Media Design
Japan

kai@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio Media Design
Japan

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we present the use of smart eyewear as reading glasses
and as non-intrusive sensing devices that can measure the electrodermal activity (EDA) of readers of fiction in real-time using
electrodes on the forehead. EDA has seen extensive use in the past
decade in accessing emotional arousal, with research linking humanskin sweating to the emotional state of a subject. Traditional waysof measuring EDA involve using the fingers, which has the highest
concentration of eccrine sweat glands, but this method proves tobe intrusive in non-laboratory environments as most daily activities require the use of one’s hands. In this paper, we discuss theviability of using smart eyewear to measure and visualize a reader’sphysiological signals as well as provide some background in EDA
research.

KEYWORDS
Skin Conductance; Electrodermal Activity; Smart Eyewear; Wearable Devices; Emotion Detection
ACM Reference Format:
Christopher Kim, Jiawen Han, Ding Ding Zheng, George Chernyshov,and Kai Kunze. 2021. Using Smart Eyewear to Sense Electrodermal Activity While Reading. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International
Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings ofthe 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiCompISWC ’21 Adjunct), September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA. ACM, New York,NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3460418.3479356

1

Ding Ding Zheng

hanjiawen@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio Media Design
Japan

INTRODUCTION

The major impact of reading works of fiction lies in the emotions
it induces and often times is the dividing factor on its reception
by the public. Stories have been around for as long as civilization
has, and with it, literature as well. Be it prose, poetry, or fables, theact of reading has always entertained and educated people acrossPermission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than theauthor(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission
and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org.
UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct, September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3460418.3479356

472

multiple cultures and age groups. Consequently, any discussion ofliterature cannot be made without taking into consideration that it
is a medium that induces emotions or feelings. As put by Johansen,
literature is ‘designed to arouse and form the feelings of the listeners and readers.’ [11] This is also addressed in a philosophicaldilemma known as the paradox of fiction, a term first coined by
Colin Radford and Michael Weston in 1970, questioning why humans are emotionally moved by events that they know are not real.
[18] To this end, Johansen argues literature possesses the ability
to create worlds that are, although fictional, very similar in multiple aspects to the real world in which we live. [11] As empathetic
creatures, we humans tend to imagine about others and self-insert
ourselves in the events that unfold in the lives of the said others,
regardless of whether they are real or fictional.
Through literature, we can ‘learn about emotions and understand our own feelings.’ [4] It has been suggested that consuming
fictional narratives play an important role in helping people learn
about their own selves and internalize their emotions. [16] One
study suggests that people who consume more fiction tend to be
more empathetic, as consuming fiction is a simulation of social
experiences that can help them practice interpersonal skills. [17]Hilgard likened this experience to something akin to hypnosis, thatthe reader is ’transformed or transported by what he reads and is
swept emotionally into the experience described by the author.’ [9]Nell uses a similar metaphor, calling it the experience a ’reading
trance’. [15] Therefore, exploring different ways to clearly identify
and measure emotional reactions that are induced by reading worksof fiction can also help us move closer to understanding our own
emotions.
According to the first-quarter 2021 executive summary provided
by NPD BookScan, the publishing industry has seen a 29 percent
growth across the adult fiction and young adult fiction genres
over the past year, which is a surprising development as booksales have been on a steady decline for the past decade. Kristen
McLean of NPD Books describes this as "the highest volume of Q1
print sales since NPD BookScan began tracking sales in 2004." Thegrowth in young adult fiction is the most notable in the fact that
one of the biggest factors credited for the growth is the social media
platform TikTok, where the BookTok hashtag has gained popularity
amidst the pandemic. As such, the experience of reading itself istransforming from something that used to be private and passive
to an experience that can connect people in times of isolation. It is

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Kim, et al.

for this reason that we propose the application of smart eyewear
as reading glasses, utilizing electrodermal activity (EDA) sensors
on the forehead. As a smart device capable of unobtrusive emotion
sensing, it can serve as an example of how physiological signals
and emotional changes can be tracked through a reading session
without significantly altering the experience in a non-laboratory
setting. This also opens up possibilities for the user to be able to havevisual records or their reading sessions in the form of visualizations,just as one would do with fitness apps.

2 RELATED WORKS
2.1 Physiological Signals and Reading
Existing research on eliciting emotions in the form of physiologicalsignals have done so using other mediums such as pictures, whichmakes use of the widely known International Affective Picture
System (IAPS), movie clips [12], music [14], and others. In contrast,
using text to perform a similar task, especially long texts like shortstories or even novels haven’t been explored to a great degree.
Studies that examine the physiological effects of short emotional
words [13] and short fragments of text [10] have been conducted.
While there are definite advantages to using short materials toquickly provide different stimuli repeatedly to the subject, measuring the physiological signals in response to longer texts also has its
advantages. As noted by Golland et. al [8], short fragments of text
can not be expected to engage readers in a way that full length stories would. Wise et. al compared the emotional responses of subjects
who came across unpleasant fictional news stories by specificallysearching for them or just surfing the web. [24] Subjects who wereactively searching for the news story with background information
experienced stronger physiological reactions than those who were
just surfing, suggesting that prior knowledge of the context andthe level of engagement is important in the emotional experience.

2.2

2.3

Smart Eyewear and Sensing

EDA is traditionally measured using the subject’s finger, as thehighest density of eccrine sweat glands are found on the palms andsoles (about 600 to 700 glands/square cm), followed by the forehead(181 glands/square cm), forearm (108 glands/square centimeter), andthe back (64 glands/square centimeter). [7, 19] However, measuring
EDA using the fingers prove to be intrusive in non-laboratoryenvironments since most daily activities require the use of hands [6],and reading is no exception. For our purposes, as the smart eyewear
can serve a purpose other than sensing (such as having prescription
lenses or blue light filters for those who read on tablets), it canbe used to sense EDA with relatively less effect on the experienceof reading itself. SC measurements on body parts other than thehand has been explored by van Dooren et. al, where they measured
SCL and SCR on 16 different parts of the body. It was found thatapart from the fingers, the forehead, foot, and shoulders were themost promising for EDA measurements [22], which reinforces theviability of using smart eyewear to measure EDA. Additionally,other sensing modalities related to emotions such as heartbeat
sensors using the temples and cognitive load [25] can be used
together with the EDA sensors, opening up the possibilities ofmore data-rich visualizations to the user and other very interesting
applications.

Skin Conductance and Emotional Arousal

Traditionally in sweat gland biology, there are two major types ofsweat glands called eccrine and apocrine. [23] A third type of sweat
gland, tentatively called the apoeccrine sweat gland, was introduced
in 1987 by Sato et. al. [20] Among these, eccrine sweat glands aremost often associated with having more involvement in emotional
responses compared to the other two types of sweat glands. Thiscan be accredited to eccrine sweat glands being innervated with thesympathetic nervous system that accompany various psychologicalprocesses, including emotional arousal. [5]Skin conductance and electrodermal activity (EDA) has had widespread use in psychological research. [21] Skin conductance refers
to a changes in electrical conductance in the skin from changes in
the rate of sweat secretion by the sweat glands. [2] Measurements of
EDA mostly focus on two parameters known as Skin Conductance
Response (SCR) and Skin Conductance Level (SCL). SCR refers toquick changes, usually within the range of seconds, in response toemotional stimuli, while the SCL refers to slower changes, within
the range of minutes or hours, and is commonly associated withthe general condition of the subject. These parameters have beenused extensively in the past decade to access emotional arousal,
as many studies suggest that SCL increases as emotional arousalincreases. [1, 3]

473

Figure 1: Testing setup with Jins MEME outfitted with electrodes and PCB with analog circuitry.

Figure 2: Wristband to measure EDA using the fingers.

Using Smart Eyewear to Sense Electrodermal Activity While Reading

UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct, September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA

Figure 3: Comparison of the SCR readings taken with the electrodes on the forehead (red) and the fingers (blue). The SCR
peaks of each are highlighted in yellow.

3

APPROACH

For the prototype, we used a Jins MEME, an off-the-shelf smart
eyewear as our base, based on ready availability. Two electrodes
were attached facing upwards to both sides of the bridge so that theywould be touching the forehead of the wearer (See Figure 1). For
the initial experiment, we also measured EDA with the fingers, themore conventional method of measuring EDA, using a wristband(See Figure 2). Both the MEME and the wristband used the same
analog front-end PCB circuitry, with a wheatstone bridge connected
to a differential ADC that communicates to an ESP32 chip over I2C.
The goal of this was to verify the viability of using smart eyewear
as a device that could reliably measure EDA even compared to theconventional way of measuring using the fingers. The subject wasmade to read "Snow, Glass, Apples", a horror-themed short story
by English author Neil Gaiman while wearing both devices. The
recording session took 20 minutes in total in a quiet environment
in order to eliminate any other external factors that could affectthe recording.
As can be seen on the graph in Figure 3, the SCR taken by the
MEME show a steady increase in intensity as the reader reads
through the rising action and climax of the story, which is locatedat the end of the story, showing a similar trend to the SCR takenusing the wristbands. The data taken on the glasses do show a muchsmaller fluctuation during the peaks than that of the wristband,
which is to be expected due to the difference in concentration ofsweat glands present on the forehead as opposed to the palm. [7, 19]
Another point worth noting is how the SCR peaks (highlighted inyellow) of the data taken with the MEME matches that of the wristband. These readings demonstrates how smart glasses can be used
as reading glasses that could also serve as a non-intrusive sensing
device. In addition, the small size of the components mean that
there is no need to alter the size or weight of the device significantly. As the data taken from the forehead using these devices474

also were shown to be viable, it may allow readers to use the device to measure their reading sessions and share and compare theirexperience with others.

4

FUTURE WORK

More extensive and rigorous testing on many more subjects isneeded to better establish that the readings taken on the foreheadusing smart eyewear are as consistent as the ones taken using thefingers. There also exists the problem of other variables such as
movement and excessive sebum (oily skin) that could interfere withthe readings using the forehead.
Once this can be sufficiently established, the next step of the
project would be to add other sensing modalities related to emotion
sensing, such as heartrate sensors on the temples or cognitive loadusing face temperatures. Another angle would be to find a way
to visualize the data taken in a form that can make sense to theaverage user.
Smart eyewear being used as sensing devices, especially in theact of reading, has its strengths in the fact that it is much lessintrusive than measuring with the fingers and that glasses alreadyhold a place in the reading experience as prescription glasses or blue
light filters. Being able to measure one’s experience while reading awork of fiction and visualize it can help open new dimensions andtransform the act of reading from an isolated solitary experience to
one that can help people connect to others.

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