Feelings by phone

A system which enables psychologists to track people's emotional behaviour through their mobile phones has been successfully road-tested by researchers. "EmotionSense" uses speech-recognition software and phone sensors in standard smart phones to assess how people's emotions are influenced by factors such as their surroundings, the time of day, or their relationships with others. It was developed by a University of Cambridge-led team of academics, including both psychologists and computer scientists. They will report the first successful trial of the system today at the Association for Computing Machinery's conference on Ubiquitous Computing in Copenhagen. Early results suggest that the technology could provide psychologists with a much deeper insight into how our emotional peaks - such as periods of happiness, anger or stress - are related to where we are, what we are doing or who we are with. "Everyone has a mobile phone, so potentially they are a perfect tool if you want to track the behaviour or emotional condition of large numbers of people," Dr. Cecilia Mascolo, from the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory, who led the research, said. "What we are trying to produce is a completely non-intrusive means of achieving that which also respects privacy.