Joint ACM workshop on human gesture and behavior understanding: (J-HGBU'11)
MM '11 Proceedings of the 19th ACM international conference on Multimedia
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This paper reviews a novel methodology called the Electronically Activated Recorder or EAR. The EAR is a portable audio recorder that periodically records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, it yields acoustic logs of people's days as they naturally unfold. In sampling only a fraction of the time, it protects participants' privacy. As a naturalistic observation method, it provides an observer's account of daily life and is optimized for the assessment of audible aspects of social environments, behaviors, and interactions. The paper discusses the EAR method conceptually and methodologically and identifies three ways in which it can enrich research in psychology and related fields. Specifically, it can (1) provide ecological, behavioral criteria that are independent of self-report, (2) calibrate psychological effects against frequencies of real-world behavior, and (3) help with the assessment of subtle and habitual behaviors that evade self-report.