Suitability of Physiological, Self-report and Behavioral Measures for Assessing Mental Workload in Pilots

Abstract

Adaptive automation shall support users in a flexible way. One way to achieve this could be by monitoring cognitive states of pilots in order to anticipate an individual’s need for support. A special challenge lies in choosing methods that enable a valid measurement of the cognitive state in question since different measures are associated with distinct strengths and weaknesses. For example, practical considerations like environmental factors, wearing comfort and intrusiveness have to be considered. The objective of this paper is to provide a collection of physiological, self-report and behavioral measures that can be applied to assess mental workload in pilots, and to discuss their advantages and disadvantages for this purpose. A targeted literature search was conducted to this end. The comparisons drawn in this paper reveal that a multi-method approach is preferable to relying on a single measure. In this regard, however, there is no one-size-fits-all solution and it is strongly advised to consider the selection of appropriate measures carefully for each specific research question and application context.