Development of Saccade Length Index of Taskload for Biocybernetic Application.

Abstract

Abstract : This report reviews progress made during the first year of a two year Phase II SBIR program to develop the Saccade Length Index of Mental Workload or SLIT. The ultimate goal of this effort is to develop a fully portable system to measure workload using the SLIT metric. Phase I work showed that workload and saccade length were related when workload was manipulated using an auditory tone counting task. Research conducted thus far in Phase II has replicated the Phase I results and has also shown 1) that the saccade length index is not affected by extended practice on a difficult tone counting task, and 2) that practice on a difficult tone counting task does not invalidate the saccade length measure when subjects perform less difficult levels of the same task. Preliminary results suggest that saccade length reflects workload on visual counting tasks in addition to auditory counting tasks, thus extending the possible application of SLIT to visual tasks which do not require precise visual fixation or tracking. Hardware has been purchased for the SLIT system and progress has been made on software development so that SLIT system may be automated for data collection and analyses. Keywords: Biocybernetics, Human performance.