Drivers are increasingly confronted with a multitude of simultaneous secondary tasks. Consequently, the ability to manage this elevated workload is a rising concern. A growing body of evidence has suggested that changes in physiology, such as heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL), along with driving metrics, such as velocity and steering wheel reversal rates, could allow a real-time monitoring of this workload. However, laboratory research often does not evaluate drivers' experience of secondary tasks over multiple repetitions or time. The present study examined the sensitivity of a variety of performance and physiological measures to changes in workload and assessed the impact of repeated exposure to a set of n-back calibration tasks. When averaged across repeated exposures, the results closely followed previous literature: increased working memory load from the n-back tasks resulted in significant increases in HR and SCL. Although each repetition of the task showed similar changes as workload increased (for example, increased HR during more difficult tasks), this effect was consistently higher for the initial compared with second and third exposures to each level of the task. Furthermore, some measures (HR, SCL) were more reliable over time than were others (steering wheel reversals, velocity). These findings may be related in part to the emotional arousal of being asked to do a task for the first time. The implications are discussed.
Impact of Repeated Exposure to a Multilevel Working Memory Task on Physiological Arousal and Driving Performance
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board ; 2518 , 1 ; 46-53
2019-04-04
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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