Measuring Mental Workload Variations in Office Work Tasks using fNIRS

Midha, Serena; Maior, Horia A.; Wilson, Max L.; Sharples, Sarah

doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102580

Cited by 55 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Iqbal et al studied changes in MWL at a micro-level within tasks, noting changes in MWL at subtask change points for example [31]. Similarly, Midha et al investigated whether fNIRS measures could diferentiate between MWL levels of diferent difculties of reading and writing tasks [42]. However, the aim of our research relates to how tracking mental workload data may be a useful tool in our daily lives by aiming to understand the role MWL plays in our lives outside of work.…”

Section: Neuroergonomics and Hcimentioning

confidence: 99%

Lived Experiences of Mental Workload in Everyday Life

Midha

Wilson

Sharples

2022

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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We can now buy consumer brain-computer interface devices to help us meditate and focus, but what are we aiming to achieve? Mental workload (MWL) is an established concept, and as a form of personal data could be useful for making positive life changes. However, MWL is typically only studied for isolated tasks to avoid overload and underload. We investigated lived experiences of MWL, aiming to understand how tracking such data could implicate our everyday lives. 19 participants, that had previously experienced tracking their mental workload, took part in interviews and an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis identifed four superordinate themes. Results point towards mixed and changing perceptions of MWL and the importance of fuctuating between MWL levels in daily life in terms of performances, perceptions, and wellbeing. These fndings are captured in an apparent Cycle, which outside factors can disrupt, and we discuss these cycles in terms of personal informatics and work performance. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; HCI theory, concepts and models.

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Section: Neuroergonomics and Hcimentioning

confidence: 99%

Lived Experiences of Mental Workload in Everyday Life

Midha

Wilson

Sharples

2022

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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“…However, fNIRS is more robust against movement artefacts [35] and thus might be favourable in real-world settings with unrestricted movement. fNIRS can be used to infer brain activity by using near-infrared light to measure changes in blood oxygenation in the brain, which change depending on metabolic demand in the area [29].…”

Section: Related Work 21 Real-world Brain Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, a lawyer submitting important paperwork, a banker making an investment, or an online sales worker trying to close a deal, are examples of office-type work where if the task does not remain within the worker's mental workload capabilities, costly performance errors might happen. In fact, Midha et al [29] showed support for fNIRS in being able to differentiate mental workload levels in office-work type tasks. Outside of work, mental workload also remains a meaningful concept, with strong relevance to areas such as using medical devices at home, navigating using technology [38] or performing work-like tasks at home [11].…”

Section: Mental Workloadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical Concerns and Perceptions of Consumer Neurotechnology from Lived Experiences of Mental Workload Tracking

Midha

Wilson

Sharples

2022

2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

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With rapid growth in the development of consumer neurotechnology, it is imperative to consider the ethical implications that this might have in order to minimise consumer harm. Whilst ethical and legal guidelines for commercialisation have previously been suggested, we aimed to further this discussion by investigating the ethical concerns held by potential end users of consumer neurotechnology. 19 participants who had previously experienced mental workload tracking in their daily lives were interviewed about their ethical concerns and perceptions of this type of future neurotechnology. An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach identified three superordinate themes. These related to concerns surrounding privacy, data validity and misinterpretation, and personal identity. The findings provide further validation for previous research and highlight further ethical considerations that should be factored into the commercialisation of neurotechnology. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; HCI theory, concepts and models.

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“…A rise in adoption of neuroimaging techniques across the key areas of IS&R resulted in numerous NeuraSearch applications with the most notable being relevance judgment [46,47], IN realisation [20], search transitions [23] or query construction [48]. Commonly used neuroimaging techniques include electroencephalography (EEG) [46,[48][49][50][51][52], functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) [20,22,49], magnetoencephalography (MEG) [53], functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) [54,55]. The EEG studies manifested the effectivity of EEG to capture the brain activities of complex cognitive processes utilising its fine-grained temporal resolution.…”

Section: Relevant Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Need Awareness

Michalkova

Parra

Moshfeghi

2022

Proceedings of the 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

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A fundamental goal of Information Retrieval (IR) is to satisfy search/ers' information need (IN). Advances in neuroimaging technologies have allowed for interdisciplinary research to investigate the brain activity associated with the realisation of IN. While these studies have been informative, they were not able to capture the cognitive processes underlying the realisation of IN and the interplay between them with a high temporal resolution. This paper aims to investigate this research question by inferring the variability of brain activity based on the contrast of a state of IN with the two other (no-IN) scenarios. To do so, we employed Electroencephalography (EEG) and constructed an Event-Related Potentials (ERP) analysis of the brain signals captured while participants experiencing a realisation of IN. In particular, the brain signals of 24 healthy participants were captured while performing a Question-Answering (Q/A) Task. Our results show a link between the early stages of processing, corresponding to awareness and the late activity, meaning memory control mechanisms. Our findings also show that participants exhibited early N1-P2 complex indexing awareness processes and indicate, thus, that the realisation of IN is manifested in the brain before it reaches the user's consciousness. This research contributes novel insights into a better understanding of IN and informs the design of IR systems to better satisfy it.

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Measuring Mental Workload Variations in Office Work Tasks using fNIRS

Cited by 55 publications

References 49 publications

Lived Experiences of Mental Workload in Everyday Life

Lived Experiences of Mental Workload in Everyday Life

Ethical Concerns and Perceptions of Consumer Neurotechnology from Lived Experiences of Mental Workload Tracking

Information Need Awareness

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