Do speech features for detecting cognitive load depend on specific languages

Speech-based cognitive load modeling recently proposed in English have enabled objective, quantitative and unobtrusive evaluation of cognitive load without extra equipment. However, no evidence indicates that these techniques could be applied to speech data in other languages without modification. In this study, a modified Stroop Test and a Reading Span Task were conducted to collect speech data in English and Chinese respectively, from which twenty non-linguistic features were extracted to investigate whether they were language dependent. Some discriminating speech features were observed language dependent, which serves as an evidence that there is a necessity to adapt speech-based cognitive load detection techniques to diverse language contexts for a higher performance.