Evaluation of Mental Workloads Affecting on vestibulo-ocular reflex

Abstract

Vestibulo-ocular reflex is known as one of the involuntary motions of the eyeball.

The action has been mainly investigated from the viewpoint of compensation function for stabilizing the gaze against disturbance on the cranium position.

However, mental workloads may affect on vestibule-ocular reflex.

The related research of the effect of mental workloads on vestibulo-ocular reflex has not yet appeared.

First, we conducted the identification of vestibulo-ocular reflex for a particular person based on the mathematical model proposed by Haslwanter et. al.

It is confirmed with experiments that the identified model for each person predicts the actual ocular movements well.

Second, we tested the capability of the identified model with manual tracking tasks.

During the tracking task, aural subtasks, which are mental arithmetic of two digits addition, were continuously given to evaluate the error from the identified model which predicts the subject response without the subtask.

The results show that mental workloads affect vestibulo-ocular reflex and can be evaluated by the identified model.