Measure the observer effect of continuous behavioral monitoring

Determine whether continuous behavioral monitoring in cognitive-process-aware writing systems causes users to modify their writing behavior and thereby affects perceived agency, ownership, or trust.

Background

AToM CoWriter continuously monitors interaction traces, including typing, cursor movement, editing, and scrolling, to infer writers’ cognitive processes. The authors identify a possible observer effect: awareness or suspicion of this monitoring could alter writing behavior and consequently influence users’ perceptions of agency, ownership, and trust. The current study did not measure this issue.

References

An important consideration for future work is whether continuous behavioral monitoring introduces an observer effect, where users modify their writing behavior because they know (or suspect) that the system is inferring their cognitive processes. Such behavioral changes could affect perceived agency, ownership, and trust, and may be particularly relevant for broader user populations beyond experienced LLM users. Our current study did not explicitly measure this effect, but it warrants investigation as cognitive process--aware writing systems become more prevalent.

— Towards Cognitive Process-Aware Proactive Writing Support  (2608.30424 - Yoshida et al., 31 Aug 2026) in Section 5, Discussion, subsection “Observer effect in behavioral monitoring”