Predicting Cognitive Load and Operational Performance in a Simulated Marksmanship Task

Abstract

Modern operational environments can place significant demands on a service member's cognitive resources, increasing the risk of errors or mishaps due to overburden. The ability to monitor cognitive burden and associated performance within operational environments is critical to improving mission readiness. As a key step toward a field-ready system, we developed a simulated marksmanship scenario with an embedded working memory task in an immersive virtual reality environment. As participants performed the marksmanship task, they were instructed to remember numbered targets and recall the sequence of those targets at the end of the trial. Low and high cognitive load conditions were defined as the recall of three- and six-digit strings, respectively. Physiological and behavioral signals recorded included speech, heart rate, breathing rate, and body movement. These features were input into a random forest classifier that significantly discriminated between the low- and high-cognitive load conditions (AUC = 0.94). Behavioral features of gait were the most informative, followed by features of speech. We also showed the capability to predict performance on the digit recall (AUC = 0.71) and marksmanship (AUC = 0.58) tasks. The experimental framework can be leveraged in future studies to quantify the interaction of other types of stressors and their impact on operational cognitive and physical performance.

Virtual reality application influences cognitive load‐mediated creativity components and creative performance in engineering design

“…Cognitive load is a construct that represents the amount of processing resources (to include working memory) required by a given task. Individuals exhibit systematic variation in both processing capacity and performance with respect to complex tasks (Paas et al, 2003;Rao et al, 2020). When a learner's capacity in the cognitive process is exceeded, cognitive load or excessive load can occur, thus hindering learning (Meyer et al, 2019).…”

“…Thus, VR education materials should be simplified as much as possible (Meyer et al, 2019). Cognitive load can be measured from physiological (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance, electroencephalography, facial movements), subjective (e.g., questionnaires), and behavioral perspectives (e.g., speech) (Armougum et al, 2019;Makransky et al, 2019;Rao et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition, researchers examined the relationships between multimedia information, cognitive load, motivation, and learning behavior (Mayer, 2014;Zinchenko et al, 2020). Relevant psychology and physiology studies have verified that VR application increases cognitive load (Armougum et al, 2019;Makransky et al, 2019;Rao et al, 2020). Meanwhile, motivation, specific professional information, and procedure behavior are creativity components (Amabile, 1996).…”

Psychophysiological Markers of Performance and Learning during Simulated Marksmanship in Immersive Virtual Reality

“…Traditional EEG experiments often record with motor responses in the form of minimal movements, such as button presses. In contrast, MoBI experiments simultaneously record multiple sources of information under naturalistic contexts allowing a more complete representation of the full-body behavior (Rao et al, 2020;Makeig, 2009). The current study used such an MoBI approach to provide important new insights into the brain dynamics accompanying the interception of a moving target in a naturalistic performance context with multiple levels of kinematic and brain measurement.…”

Effects of Acute Stress on Psychophysiology in Armed Tactical Occupations: A Narrative Review

“…The enduring deployments and unpredictability of direct action creates a high stress environment, significantly increasing the demand of cognitive resources from soldiers, placing them at a greater risk of errors and mishaps in the field [18,19]. This increase in cognitive demand can influence combat performance, resulting in poorer strategic decision-making and decreases in shooting accuracy [20].…”