Individual differences in the experience of cognitive workload

Abstract

This study investigated the roles of four psychosocial variables -anxiety, conscientiousness, emotional intelligence, and Protestant work ethic -on subjective ratings of cognitive workload as measured by the Task Load Index (TLX) and the further connections between the four variables and TLX ratings of task performance. The four variables represented aspects of an underlying construct of elasticity versus rigidity in response to workload. Participants were 141 undergraduates who performed a vigilance task under different speeded conditions while working on a jigsaw puzzle for 90 minutes. Regression analysis showed that anxiety and emotional intelligence were the two variables most proximally related to TLX ratings. TLX ratings contributed to the prediction of performance on the puzzle, but not the vigilance task. Severity error bias was evident in some of the ratings. Although working in pairs improved performance, it also resulted in higher ratings of temporal demand and perceived performance pressure.

Understanding mental workload: from a clarifying concept analysis toward an implementable framework

“…Compared to other employees, Yves will consequently spend less cognitive resources and he will perceive the thinking that he is doing as fairly low. Other employee related moderating variables include, e.g., differences in working memory capacity (Jipp and Ackerman 2016), dexterity (Mayer and Sims 1994;Pillay 1997), technological literacy (cf., Venkatesh et al 2003), experience, motivation and personality differences in, e.g., conscientiousness (Guastello et al 2014), tendency to worry (Grassmann et al 2017) and coping style (Hart and Staveland 1988;Young et al 2014). Also, Yves could have had the possibility to, on his own initiative, consult assistive technology indicating matching assembly parts as well.…”

Pathways to health: conceptual clarification and appropriate statistical treatment of mediator, moderator, and indirect effects using examples from burnout research

“…Similarly, within the work context, the association between negative aspects of the work environment and physical and psychological strain has been well documented. For example, quantitative workload has been linked to anxiety (Guastello et al, 2015), burnout (Portoghese et al, 2014; Pretorius, 1994b), and general psychological distress (Ilies et al, 2015). Other aspects of the work environment like role conflict and role ambiguity have also been found to be associated with burnout (Huat et al, 2018; Pretorius, 1994b) as well as job dissatisfaction and job-related anxiety (Urien et al, 2017).…”

Transfer of training—Virtual reality training with augmented multisensory cues improves user experience during training and task performance in the real world

“…The levels of perceived workload were assessed with the NASA TLX workload questionnaire [38,42]. Higher ratings on subscales indicate higher perceived demand, except for the performance subscale where a higher rating indicates lower self-perceived success on the task, this is indicated by arrows in Fig 6 . The data were analysed by obtaining single workload score as well as by values on each workload subscales [42][43][44]. For a first analysis, the overall workload was computed as the average of all six subscales.…”