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Breathprints of bilingual proficiency: Exhaled Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) biomarkers and GSR indexed cognitive load in English and Hindi

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Insha Amin^1,2 (), Amrutha MS^1,2, Ankit Patel^1,2, Arjuman R Reshi^1,2, Aishwarya Singh^1,2,3, Rahul R. Marathe⁴, Ravikrishna R^2,5, Pengfei Liu⁶, Scot T. Martin⁷, Sachin S. Gunthe^1,2; ¹Environmental Engineering Division, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India, ²Centre for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India, ³Aerosol Chemistry Department, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, Mainz 55128, ⁴Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India;c Robert Bosch Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Chennai, India, ⁵Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India, ⁶School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0340, United States, ⁷School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States

The human body operates as an intricate physio-chemical system,continually generating volatile organic compounds (VOCs) via endogenous bio-chemical processes, which are emitted primarily through respiration and skin. While, non-invasive markers that track cognitive load during real-world language use could provide scalable assessment of language skills, whether breath chemistry provides such a marker has not been explored in details. We present the results obtained by conducting an experiment with 253 participants involving two reading – response tasks: They read a paragraph in English/Hindi and answered in English/Hindi. The performance results were assessed by an independent expert, who was not part of this study as a “blind assessment” meaning no details about the objective and mandate of the study were disclosed to the expert. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), facial skin temperature, and exhaled VOCs were measured before the tasks, during tasks, and after completion. Four VOCs (acetone, isoprene, methanol, and m/z 43.039) were analysed as biochemical markers to assess the language proficiency. Our results demonstrate that cognitive load, as modulated by language processing demands, produces consistent and interpretable changes in specific VOC emissions. These findings establish VOC profiling as a promising, non-invasive modality for assessing language proficiency and related change in cognitive performance, independent of direct behavioural task scoring. This integrated, multimodal approach enhances our understanding of the biochemical signatures underlying cognition and highlights the potential of VOC profiling as a non-invasive biomarker for assessing language proficiency, with significant applications in educational assessment and the early detection of language-related disorders such as dyslexia.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions