Measuring performance changes in highly transient extreme heat stress: Rationale, problem, and experimental procedures.

Abstract

Abstract : A review of the existing state of the art for handling human performance under transient heat stress is presented. It was concluded that it would be necessary to develop a new methodology based on 'micro-performance' measurements to assess severe localized transient heat stresses as relevant to contemporary flight problems. The test procedure proposed is based on the rationale that a primary task with difficulty that can be varied according to subject error in order to maintain a relatively constant subject performance level can be used as a measure of the moment-to-moment perceptual load. In addition to the primary task, secondary tasks have been suggested to help simulate problems in decision-making and verbal communication.