• DOI:10.1145/2858036.2858388
• Corpus ID: 8121143

Learn Piano with BACh: An Adaptive Learning Interface that Adjusts Task Difficulty Based on Brain State

@article{Yuksel2016LearnPW,
  title={Learn Piano with BACh: An Adaptive Learning Interface that Adjusts Task Difficulty Based on Brain State},
  author={Beste F. Yuksel and Kurt B. Oleson and Lane Harrison and Evan M. Peck and Daniel Afergan and Remco Chang and Robert J. K. Jacob},
  journal={Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year={2016}
}

• B. Yuksel, Kurt B. Oleson, +4 authors R. Jacob
• Published 7 May 2016
• Psychology
• Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We present Brain Automated Chorales (BACh), an adaptive brain-computer system that dynamically increases the levels of difficulty in a musical learning task based on pianists' cognitive workload measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy. As users' cognitive workload fell below a certain threshold, suggesting that they had mastered the material and could handle more cognitive information, BACh automatically increased the difficulty of the learning task. We found that learners played with significantly increased accuracy and speed in the brain-based adaptive task compared to our control condition. Participant feedback indicated that they felt they learned better with BACh and they liked the timings of the level changes. The underlying premise of BACh can be applied to learning situations where a task can be broken down into increasing levels of difficulty.