Correlation Between Heart Rate, Skin Temperature and Emotional State in Exergames

Abstract

Computer games have become an established medium, exergames are a special type of game. These are controlled by movement and are designed to improve its users performance. Emotions are an important component during gameplay because they can provide inferences about the user experience. This paper therefore conducts a study to test the correlation of different emotional stages with metrics of heart rate, heart rate variability and skin temperature. This is to validate the feasibility of this data in exergames. To this end, two exergames were played while biosignals were recorded. The discretely measurable data is combined with subjective assessments of the users to identify a correlation to the individually perceived emotion. Statistically significant correlations were found between the physiological characteristics and the affective state of the subjects.