SSVEP-based BCI performance in children

Mullins, Jessica L

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/88086 Copy

Description

Title

SSVEP-based BCI performance in children

Author(s)

Mullins, Jessica L

Issue Date

2015-07-20

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Bretl, Timothy W.

Department of Study

Computer Science

Discipline

Computer Science

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Brain-Computer Interface
• Steady-State Visually Evoked Potential (SSVEP)
• Children
• Game

Abstract

"The first contribution of this thesis is to show that children (9-11 years old) can achieve good performance when using a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) based on the steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP). In our study, ten children (mean 9.9 years old) used an SSVEP-based BCI with a mean accuracy rate of 85.6% and a task completion rate of 97.5%. In contrast, a prior study of children (mean 9.8 years old) using an SSVEP-based BCI reported mean accuracy rates of between 50%-76% (depending on stimulation frequency) and a task completion rate of 59%. The second contribution of this thesis is to provide evidence that factors such as motivation or distraction may influence performance by children using SSVEP-based BCI more than the choice of stimulation frequency. Frequencies used by both our study (6-10Hz) and the prior study (7-11Hz) were similar. In contrast, our study asked children to play a computer game in a quiet environment, while the prior study asked children to perform text entry in a noisy environment. The game, which we developed and used for the first time in our study, is ``Brain Storm"" --- it allows a single player to pretend to be a farmer protecting crops from malicious lightning clouds using the power of his or her brain. All participants in our study were asked both to complete a target selection task and to play the game. Our results show participants perform better when playing the game (88.6% accuracy rate) than when completing the target selection task (82.5% accuracy rate). Performance in both conditions was better than reported in the prior study (approximately 50% accuracy rate with the 7-11Hz frequency range)."

Graduation Semester

2015-8

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88086

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2015 Jessica L Mullins

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