2012 Volume 43 Issue 6 Pages 1341-1346
This study aimed to examine the potential of using a stimulus detection task as a cognitive load assessment tool. In both experiments 1 and 2, participants drove a simulated highway route and performed some attention-demanding subsidiary tasks. Furthermore, they were required to perform a stimulus detection task in which visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli were presented in a random sequence and participants had to make key-press responses to the onset of stimuli. The reaction time and the detection error rate increased when participants performed both driving and the attention-demanding task. The pattern of results differed with the cognitive characteristics of subsidiary tasks. Moreover, the performance of the stimulus detection task was sensitive to the variation of cognitive load, which was not detected by the subjective mental workload assessment technique. Characteristics of the stimulus detection task as a cognitive load assessment tool were discussed.
