9 Studying cognitive load in defence

Abstract

IntroductionCognitive load has a long association with human factors research into safety-critical performance. For example, surgeons need to balance task demands against their available cognitive resources but evidence shows that cognitive overload can impair a surgeon’s performance in complex or non-routine tasks. In Defence, the increasing availability and complexity of data can increase rates of cognitive ‘overload’ in personnel. Conversely, the expanding use of automation can lead to ‘underload’, linked to declines in vigilance. There is a requirement to improve understanding of the impact of technology on cognitive load, how to measure it and effectively manage it for our personnel.MethodTwo studies contribute to supporting this requirement. The first comprised literature reviews to identify candidate measures of cognitive load and subsequent experiments to collect preliminary data from a subset of self-report, physiological, and neurophysiological measures. The second study was an experimental trial of a neuroadaptive system, which used AI to adapt an alerting procedure based on biomarkers of cognitive load.ResultsThe results showed that a number of measures were sensitive to changes in workload and a combined approach provided greater accuracy, compared to a single measure. The trial demonstrated that the neuroadaptive system improved performance in attentionally demanding tasks using early indicators of cognitive overload.ConclusionCognitive load can be measured in a number of ways and this research provides initial evidence of the utility of combining measures to increase validity. Collecting reliable physiological and neurophysiological data is challenging even in controlled lab conditions.Neuroadaptive solutions offer promising ways to mitigate the onset of undesirable neurocognitive states. However, these need to be modelled on individuals’ own psychological state. For example, experienced surgeons or senior residents can process larger amounts of information than novices and an impersonalised system has the potential to increase cognitive load.