A novel approach to the physiological measurement of mental workload

Miller, Matthew W.; Rietschel, Jeremy C.; McDonald, Craig G.; Hatfield, Bradley D.

doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.02.003

Cited by 147 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

130

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The present results further contrast with previous studies reporting a smaller P2 amplitude as workload increased (Allison and Polich, 2008;Miller et al, 2011). However, in these studies, subjects performed a visuo-motor task under levels of incrementallyvarying difficulty, while the second task of interest was presented in a verbal sensory modality.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…In line with early EEG studies that emphasized the task difficulty as a major variation factor of the P3 amplitude (Miller et al, 2011;Polich, 2007), in the present study the amplitudes of its components (i.e. P3a and P3b) were also inversely related to task difficulty (Fig.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…From a cognitive point of view, the P2 component could reflect pre-attentive alert mechanisms contributing to improve the perception of the stimuli. In this context, a reduction of P2 could diminish the stimulus information available to the later processes indexed by P3, thereby leading to a further reduction in amplitude of this component (Miller et al, 2011). Together, this supports the idea that attentional-dependent ERP components such as P2, P3a and P3b (Campanella et al, 2002;Goodin et al, 1978;Hansenne, 2000aHansenne, , 2000bJohnson, 1986) have a reliable sensitivity to workload changes (Miller et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…The efficient allocation of attentional resources over time is crucial when individuals perform mentally-demanding tasks. Thus, it is of major interest to assess if the time-dependent modulation of workload-related functional indices is likely to highlight the manner by which neuronal resources are allocated during the performance of a task (Korsnes et al, 2008;Miller et al, 2011;Vingerhoets and Luppens, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Globally, studies on mental workload have reported that both P3 amplitude and latency are inversely related to task difficulty (Allison and Polich, 2008;Miller et al, 2011;Ullsperger et al, 2001). This inverse relationship can be interpreted as a reflection of the amount of variation of attentional resources engaged.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Assessment of mental workload: A new electrophysiological method based on intra-block averaging of ERP amplitudes

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present study contributes to the current debate about electrophysiological measurements of mental workload. Specifically, the allocation of attentional resources during different complexity levels of tasks and its changes over time are of great interest. Therefore, we investigated mental workload using tasks varying in difficulty during an auditory oddball target paradigm. For data analysis, we applied a novel method to compute event-related potentials (ERPs) by intra-block epoch averaging of P2, P3a and P3b amplitude components for the infrequent target stimuli. We obtained eight consecutive blocks of 5 epochs each, which allowed us to develop an electrophysiological parameter to measure mental workload. In both the easy and the more constraining tasks, the amplitude of P2 decreased beginning with the second block of the sequence. In contrast, the amplitudes of P3a and P3b components linearly decreased following the repetition of the target in the more constraining task, but not in the easy task. Statistical analysis revealed intra-block differences on amplitudes of ERPs of interest between the easy and the more constraining tasks, confirming this method as a measure to assess mental workload. Since a subject is his own control, the present method represents an electrophysiological parameter for individual measurement of mental workload and may therefore be applicable in clinical routine.

show abstract

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%