Human Responses to a Workload Change

Abstract

Twenty male students performed three 5-minute trials of a PC-based multi-task which consisted of three independent tasks, i.e., resource management task, system monitoring (vigilance reaction time) task and compensatory tracking task. Participants were instructed to perform only one task (tracking) during the second trial. Tracking task performance, subjective workload, mood scores and physiological parameters (Tissue Blood Volume, Hemodynamics, Systolic Time Intervals, Heart Rate Variability and Skin Potential Level (SPL))were obtained. The task performance was significantly improved and subjective workloads evaluated by NASA-TLX were significantly low in the second trial. SPL measured on the left palm showed a significantly high value in the low workload trial when compared to high workload trials. No other physiological parameter showed such workload related significant changes among the trials. This result suggested that SPL is sensitive to the workload change although that the electrode must be attached to a palm so that it may disturb task performance.

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