Abstract
A serious disadvantage of many available secondary task measures of operator workload is that they are difficult to employ during later stages of system design and evaluation. Common problems with traditional laboratory tasks include poor operator acceptance and the potential for intrusion on primary tasks. Two methods designed to overcome these limitations are being investigated at the Air Force Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory. In order to improve integration of the measurement task with the operator's duties, realistic aircraft radio communications activities have been developed as secondary tasks. Analytical and subjective methods have been employed to develop communications tasks with scaled workload values. A second project has focused on further development of the interval production task as a workload metric. This task has minimal response requirements and appears to act as an index of load rather than a reserve capacity test.
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