Are Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neurofeedback acceptable?
Résumé
The adoption of a technology can be defined as the decision made by a person or a society to accept and use it. It is based on two phases during which the willingness to use that technology is assessed. The first phase corresponds to the evaluation of the acceptability of the technology and takes place before the use while the second phase, the technology acceptance, comes afterwards. Assessing the acceptability of BCIs/NF is of utmost importance as it could provide i) insights on the propensity of people to use these technologies and ii) leads to facilitate their adoption.We reviewed the literature dealing with the acceptability of BCIs/NF and using validated questionnaires and models. Through a reproducible search method, we retrieved a list of 55 main references of acceptability questionnaires and models. Then, we searched Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science to identify the articles in the fields of BCIs/NF that cited these references. We included in our review all the articles reporting experimental results on the acceptability of BCIs/NF that were based on one or several validated acceptability questionnaire(s).Four articles were included in our review. Two of them assessed the acceptability while the others assessed the acceptance of the BCIs. While there are too few articles included to conclude on the acceptability of those technologies, the results are encouraging. BCIs were perceived as useful at 78% by motor impaired individuals who used BCIs for pain management and at 84% by neurotypical individuals who used BCIs to browse an instruction manual. The perceived ease of use varied from 30% to 80%, which could be related to differences in the protocols. Among other factors, the presence of social support appeared to influence the acceptability.