A COMPARISON OF HEART-RATE, EYE ACTIVITY, EEG AND SUBJECTIVE MEASURESOF PILOT MENTAL WORKLOAD DURING FLIGHT

Background: Mental workload is a major consideration in the design and operation of modern aircraft systems. Objective measures of mental wo rkload that are sensitive and diagnostic are required to meet the need s of both pilots and designers. Due to the multifaceted nature of thes e complex mental demands multiple measures are required. Hypothesis: P sychophysiological and subjective measures provide unique information about mental workload during flight. Methods: Cardiac, eye, brain and subjective data were collected during an actual flight scenario design ed to provide tasks which required different piloting skills at severa l levels of menial workload. Results: Heart rate was sensitive to the demands of flight but not diagnostic with regard to determining the ca use of the workload. Heart rates increased during take offs and landin gs and to an intermediate level during instrument flight rules (IFR) s egments. By showing sensitivity to only the visual demands of the vari ous segments of flight eye activity was more diagnostic. The theta ban d of the EEG demonstrated increased power during those flight segments which required inflight mental calculations. The subjective measures showed trends suggesting different levels of mental demand but demonst rated few statistically significant differences. Conclusions: Multiple measures, especially psychophysiological measures, provide a comprehe nsive picture of the mental demands of flight. The measures used in th is study were shown to provide unique, non-overlapping information. Be cause of the continuous nature of the psychophysiological data it may be possible to develop systems which provide on-line monitoring of men tal workload that can provide feedback to the pilot and aircraft syste ms.