Patterns of smartphone typing performance by time awake: implications for unobtrusive ambulatory mental fatigue assessment

What is it about?

This paper investigated the potential utility of smartphone keyboard typing performance as a continuous, passive and ambulatory measure of mental fatigue. Using SensorKit keyboard sensor data from 45,042 iPhone typing episodes collected from 366 subjects, along with sleep information recorded by wearable devices, we found that the smartphone typing speed has significant relationships with time awake. Typing speed initially increases with wakefulness, peaking around 7.5 hours after waking and declining to over 0.1 SD below average around 15.3 hours, highly consistent with findings from traditional lab-based measures of mental fatigue such as the Psychomotor Vigilance Tests.

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Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings underscore the potential of smartphone typing metrics as an unobtrusive tool for ambulatory mental fatigue monitoring - an innovation that is scalable and particularly beneficial for managing risks in demanding professional environments.