Applicability Of Interactive Evolutionary Computation To Mental Health Measurement

We show experimentally the applicability of interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) to a new application field, mental health measurement. We had 3 schizophrenics and 5 mentally healthy students design happy and sad impression computer graphics (CG) lighting images using IEC and asked other 33 students to evaluate the CG images using Scheffe's method of paired comparison. Statistical tests of the evaluations showed that the range of emotional impressions perceived by the three schizophrenics between happy-sad was significantly narrower than that which was perceived by the mentally healthy students (p < 0.01). This experimental result implies that IEC has potential to contribute to psychiatry, and it also showed the possibility to expand IEC applicability beyond conventional system optimization and to a new area, mental health measurement.