Event scheduling is a group decision-making process in which social dynamics influence people's choices and the overall outcome. As a result, scheduling is not simply a matter of finding a mutually agreeable time, but a process that is shaped by social norms and values, which can highly vary between countries. To investigate the influence of national culture on people's scheduling behavior we analyzed more than 1.5 million Doodle date/time polls from 211 countries. We found strong correlations between characteristics of national culture and several behavioral phenomena, such as that poll participants from collectivist countries respond earlier, agree to fewer options but find more consensus than predominantly individualist societies. Our study provides empirical evidence of behavioral differences in group decision-making and time perception with implications for cross-cultural collaborative work.

Emotions accompany everyone in the daily life, playing a key role in non-verbal communication, and they are essential to the understanding of human behavior. Emotion recognition could be done from the text, speech, facial expression or gesture. In this paper, we concentrate on recognition of “inner” emotions from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals as humans could control their facial expressions or vocal intonation. The need and importance of the automatic emotion recognition from EEG signals has grown with increasing role of brain computer interface applications and development of new forms of human-centric and human-driven interaction with digital media. We propose fractal dimension based algorithm of quantification of basic emotions and describe its implementation as a feedback in 3D virtual environments. The user emotions are recognized and visualized in real time on his/her avatar adding one more so-called “emotion dimension” to human computer interfaces.

Recently, EEG-based technology has become more popular in “serious” games designs and developments since new wireless headsets that meet consumer demand for wear ability, price, portability and ease-of-use are coming to the market. Originally, EEG-based technologies were used in neurofeedback games and brain-computer interfaces. Now, such technologies could be used in entertainment, e-learning and new medical applications. In this paper, we review on neurofeedback game designs and algorithms, and propose design, algorithm, and implementation of new EEG-based 2D and 3D concentration games. Possible future medical applications of the games are discussed.