A novel approach to the physiological measurement of mental workload

作者：Miller Matthew W; Rietschel Jeremy C; McDonald Craig G; Hatfield Bradley D^*

来源：International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2011, 80(1): 75-78.

DOI：10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.02.003

• Mental Workload
• Attention
• Event-Related Potential
• Performance

While performing a visuo-motor task under incrementally-varied levels of difficulty, individuals were probed with a variety of novel, task-irrelevant, auditory stimuli. To determine the effect of task load on cerebral-cortical processing of these stimuli, event-related potentials were recorded while participants performed the task. We found that N1, P2, P3 and late positive potential (LPP) component amplitudes were inversely related to task-difficulty. This suggests that a variant of the oddball paradigm - in which the stimulus stream comprises novel sounds - is capable of providing a reliable index of mental workload.

• 出版日期2011-4