Handbook of Perception and Human Performance. Volume 2. Cognitive Processes and Performance

Abstract : This chapter has attempted to bring together the laboratory and field-based techniques currently in use to assess workload. No doubt, many specific procedures of interest to particular applications have been left out of this survey. In no sense is this meant to summarily exclude these from any list of valid workload assessment techniques. In fact, several of these are acknowledged to show considerable promise (e.g., occlusion techniques and respiratory rhythms). They are not discussed here partly because of space limitations and partly because a judgment had to be made concerning the practicality and general applicability of each measure. It is hoped that the inclusion of general references will serve to point the interested reader to the individual techniques not included here. Similarly, a class of techniques frequently used to assess workload was deliberately excluded from this chapter. Task analytic methods, particularly as they are used with computer models of whole missions or operations (see e.g., Lane, Strieb, Glenn, & Wherry, 1981) constitute an important tool for work- load investigations during design and other stages of aircraft and systems development. These techniques, however, are primarily off-line analyses that utilize the kind of laboratory and field data gathered with the techniques such as those described in this chapter. They provide an overall systems answer to the workload question and as such deserve separate treatment from highly specific workload measures. The interested reader is referred to Chubb (1981), Geer (1981), Lane et al. (1981), Parks (1979), and Wherry (1984) for reviews and introductions to some of the modeling techniques used in these areas. swr