Evaluation of Construction Workers’ Emotional States during Virtual Reality-Based Safety Training
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2022
ABSTRACT
Safety training is essential to encouraging construction workers to actively prevent construction accidents. Virtual reality (VR)-based safety training is becoming popular because it enhances trainees’ learning without increasing physical hazards. Investigating the effectiveness of VR-based safety training will provide a basis to determine what should be maintained and complemented in safety training. A wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) device can analyze trainees’ valence and arousal during the training and, in turn, measure their emotions (e.g., excitement and disappointment) which indicate their interests in learning and their level of knowledge acquisition. Thus, the emotional states can be used to evaluate the training effectiveness. Unfortunately, it still remains unclear how trainees’ emotions vary throughout the training. Therefore, the authors measure construction workers’ emotions during a VR-based safety training using EEG signals to evaluate its effectiveness. To achieve this objective, the VR safety training regarding fall prevention was performed with 20 construction workers who wore a wearable EEG headset to collect their EEG signals during the training. The training results are threefold. First, while learning about a safe harness and lanyard, an average construction worker felt excited except for when a scaffold system was collapsed. Second, experienced construction workers on average felt excited throughout the training. Third, while less experienced workers felt excited during the introduction of the safety gears, they felt tense when making a safety decision. These results indicate that using EEG signals during VR-based safety training will enable trainees’ emotional state measurement and, in turn, a better design of safety training.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Anderson, E. W., Potter, K. C., Matzen, L. E., Shepherd, J. F., Preston, G. A., and Silva, C. T. (2011). “A User Study of Visualization Effectiveness Using EEG and Cognitive Load.” IEEE Sympo. Vis., 30, 791–800.
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., and Damasio, A. R. (2000). “Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex.” Cereb. Cortex, 10(3), 295–307.
Bhandari, S., and Hallowell, M. R. (2017). “Emotional Engagement in Safety Training: Impact of Naturalistic Injury Simulations on the Emotional State of Construction Workers” J. Constr. Eng. Manag., 143(12), 04107090.
Bhandari, S., Hallowell, M. R., Boven, L. V., Welker, K. M., Golparvar-Fard, M., and Gruber, J. (2020). “Using Augmented Virtuality to Examine How Emotions Influence Construction-Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment, and Safety Decisions” J. Constr. Eng. Manag., 146(2), 04019105.
Bradley, M. M., and Lang, P. J. (1994). “Measuring emotion: The self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential.” J. Behav. Ther. Exp. Psychiatry, 25(1) 49–59.
Chen, C., and Sun, Y. (2012). “Assessing the effects of different multimedia materials on emotions and learning performance for visual and verbal style learners.” Computers and Education, 59(4), 1273–1285.
Choudhry, R. M., and Fang, D. (2008). “Why operatives engage in unsafe work behavior: Investigating factors on construction sites.” Saf. Sci., 46(4), 566–584.
Chung, S., Cheon, J., and Lee, K. (2015). “Emotion and multimedia learning: an investigation of the effects of valence and arousal on different modalities in an instructional animation.” Instructional Science, 45, 545–559.
Dickinson, J. K., Woodard, P., Canas, R., Ahamed, S., and Lockston, D. (2011). “Game-based trench safety education: development and lessons learned.” J. Inf. Technol. Constr., 16 (8), 119–134.
Estupiñán, S., Rebelo, F., Noriega, P., Ferreira, C., and Duarte, E. (2014). “Can Virtual Reality Increase Emotional Responses (Arousal and Valence)? A Pilot Study.” International Conference of Design, User Experience, and Usability, 541–549.
Hare, B., Cameron, I., Real, K. J., and Maloney, W. F. (2013) “Exploratory case safety of pictorial aids for communicating health and safety for migrant construction workers.” J. Constr. Eng. Manag., 139, 818–825.
Hwang, S., Jebelli, H., Choi, B., Choi, M., and Lee, S. (2017) ”Wearable EEG-based Workers’ Emotional State Measurement During Construction Task.” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 144, 04018050.
Jebelli, H., Hwang, S., and Lee, S. (2017) “An EEG Signal Processing Framework to Obtain High Quality Brain Waves from an Off-the-Shelf Wearable EEG Device.” Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 32(1), 04017070.
Jeelani, I., Han, K., and Alber, A. (2020) “Development of virtual reality and stereo-panoramic environments for construction safety training.” Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 27(8), 1853.
Keller, C., Siegrist, M., and Gutscher, H. (2006). “The role of the affect and availability heuristics in risk communication.” Risk Analysis, 26(3), 631–639.
Lang, A. (2006) “Using the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing to design effective cancer communication messages.” J. Commun. 56(1), 57–80.
Le, Q. T., Pedro, A., and Park, C. S. (2015) “A Social Virtual Reality Based Construction Safety Education System for Experiential Learning.” Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 79, 487–506.
Lewis, R. S., Weekes, N. Y., and Wang, T. H. (2007). “The effect of a naturalistic stressor on frontal EEG asymmetry, stress, and health.” Biol. Psychol., 75(3), 239–247.
Li, X., Yi, W., Chi, H. L., Wang, X., and Chan, A. P. C. (2018). “A critical review of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) applications in construction safety.” Autom. Constr., 86, 150–162.
Nykänen, M., Puro, V., Tiikkaja, M., Kannisto, H., Lantto, E., Simpura, F., Uusitalo, J., Lukander, K., Räsänen, T., and Teperi, A. M. (2020) “Evaluation of the efficacy of a virtual reality-based safety training and human factors training method: study protocol for a randomised-controlled trial” Inj. Prev., 26(4), 360–369.
Nordin, A. D., Hairston, W. D., and Ferris, D. P. (2019). “Human electrocortical dynamics while stepping over obstacles.” Scientific Reports, 9(1), 4693.
OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). “Commonly Used Statistics” <https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/commonstats.html>(Jun. 11, 2021).
Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Frenzel, A. C., Barchfeld, P., and Perry, R. P. (2011). “Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The achievement emotions questionnaire (AEQ).” Contemp. Educ. Psychol., 36(1), 36–48.
PIXO VR. “Fall Protection” https://pixovr.com/fall-protection (Jun. 11, 2021).
Robson, J., Bailey, B., and Mendick, H. (2008) “Learners’ emotional and psychic responses to encounters with learning support in further education and training” British Journal of Educational Studies, 56(3), 304–322.
Sacks, R., Perlman, A., and Barak, R. (2013) “Construction safety training using immersive virtual reality.” Constr. Manag. Econ., 31, 1005–1017.
Slovic, P., and Peters, E. (2006). “Risk perception and affect.” Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci., 15(6), 322–325.
Thammasan, N., Moriyama, K., Fukui, K., and Numao, M. (2017). “Familiarity effects in EEG-based emotion recognition.” Brain informatics, Springer, 4(1), 39–50.
Tyng, C. M., Amin, H. U., Saad, M. N. M., and Malik, A. S. (2017) “The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory.” Frontiers in psychology. 8, 1454.
Xu, S., Ni, Q., and Du, Q. (2019) “The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality in Safety Training: Measurement of Emotional Arousal with Electromyography,”.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published online: Mar 7, 2022
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
Cited by
- Josiane Isingizwe, Ricardo Eiris, Ahmed Jalil Al-Bayati, Immersive Storytelling Safety Training to Enhance Trainee Engagement: Pilot Study for Fall Hazards in the Residential Construction Sector, Construction Research Congress 2024, 10.1061/9780784485293.046, (455-465), (2024).