Psychophysiology and high-performance cognition - a brief review of the literature

Abstract

The psychophysiological method can be used to detect some simple cognitive states such as arousal, attentiveness, or mental workload. This approach can be especially interesting when cognition has some productive purpose, as in knowledge work, and tends to be related to human-computer interaction (HCI). However more interesting for applied purposes are acts of coordinated high-level cognition. High-level (or higher-order) cognition (HLC) is typically associated with decision making, problem solving, and executive control of cognition and action. Further, an intuitive approach for assessing whether someone is engaged in HLC is to measure their performance of a known task.Given this, it is reasonable to define high-performance cognition (HPC) as HLC under some performance restriction, such as real-time pressure or expert skill level. Such states are also interesting for HCI in work, and their detection represents an ambitious aim for using the psychophysiological method. We report a brief review of the literature on the topic. ABSTRACTThe psychophysiological method can be used to detect some simple cognitive states such as arousal, attentiveness, or mental workload. This approach can be especially interesting when cognition has some productive purpose, as in knowledge work, and tends to be related to human-computer interaction (HCI). However more interesting for applied purposes are acts of coordinated high-level cognition. High-level (or higher-order) cognition (HLC) is typically associated with decision making, problem solving, and executive control of cognition and action. Further, an intuitive approach for assessing whether someone is engaged in HLC is to measure their performance of a known task. Given this, it is reasonable to define high-performance cognition (HPC) as HLC under some performance restriction, such as real-time pressure or expert skill level. Such states are also interesting for HCI in work, and their detection represents an ambitious aim for using the psychophysiological method. We report a brief review of the literature on the topic.

The Psychophysiology Primer: A Guide to Methods and a Broad Review with a Focus on Human–Computer Interaction

“…Furthermore, specific topics have inspired recent reviews. Cowley (2015), for instance, undertook a preliminary review of the use of psychophysiology to assess states of high-level cognition, a new and promising area of study, which is typically associated with decision-making, problem-solving, and executive control of cognition and action. Novak et al (2012) compiled a detailed review of data-fusion applications (the source for Tables 2.1, 2.2, and 4.1).…”