Abstract
Adaptive training and workload management have the potential to drastically change safety and productivity in high-risk fields—including, air-traffic control, missile defense, and nuclear power-plant operations. Quantifying and classifying cognitive load is important for optimal performance. Brain-based metrics have previously been associated with mental workload. Specifically, attenuation of prefrontal activity has been linked to cognitive overload, a cognitive load state associated with degraded task performance. We hypothesized that a similar nonlinearity would be observed for cognitive underload. When underload and overload effects are combined, they should form a cubic function in lateral prefrontal cortex as a function of working memory load. The first of two studies assessed the relationships between spatial working memory load with subjective, behavioral and hemodynamic measures. A cubic function was observed in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC; Brodmann’s Area 46) relating working memory load to changes in oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO). The second, two-part study tested the effects of workload transitions to different cognitive load states. Part-one replicated the effects observed in study one and identified transition points for individual performers. Part-two assessed the effects of transitioning to different cognitive load states. Cognitive load state transitions caused a deviation between behavioral measures and induced a significant change in the cubic function relating LDLPFC HbO and working memory load. From these observations, we present a hypothesis associating workload transitions with the disruption of cognitive process integration.
Highlights
Humans are capable of complex and amazing skills
We developed two studies aimed at improving our understanding of cognitive load states and the mechanisms underlying the performance effects of workload transitions
Significant fixed effects pertaining to oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin were submitted to a false discovery rate (FDR) correction procedure to control for multiple comparisons—details of which can be found in McKendrick et al (2017)
Summary
Skilled performance may be enhanced by adapting training and task constraints to the mental needs of the individual (Chandler and Sweller, 1991) In this context, cognitive load refers to the amount of mental work an individual is doing relative to the amount of mental work an individual is capable of doing (Parasuraman et al, 2008). If an individual has a maximum working memory capacity (WMC) of 5, a high workload condition may require that individual to hold four items (80% of their maximum) in memory while a low workload task would require the same individual to hold two items (40% of their maximum) in memory These high and low cognitive load levels would vary by participant based on their maximum WMC. While the previous example provides a simple view of adaptive task loading, more complex methods and algorithms can be used to better identify the cognitive load state of an individual
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