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Scanning the Brain for Impending Error

Federico Cirett, a computer science doctoral student at the University of Arizona, is studying brain wave activity to predict when students will make mistakes.

Cirett observed university students who spoke English as a second language while they took the math portion of the SAT. The students wore headsets developed to monitor high-stress and fatigue in military personnel.

“Measuring the activity, Cirett was able to detect with 80 percent accuracy whether a student would answer a question incorrectly about 20 seconds after they began the question,” wrote La Monica Everett-Haynes for UA News.

"If we can detect when they are going to fail, maybe we can change the text or switch the question to give them another one at a different level of difficulty, but also to keep them engaged," Cirett said. "Brain wave data is the nearest thing we have to really know when the students are having problems."

Read the full article from UA News

Id: 
1305
Start Date: 
Monday, April 30, 2012