TY - GEN
T1 - Heart rate monitoring for the detection of changes in mental demands during computer work
AU - Zargari Marandi, Ramtin
AU - Madeleine, Pascal
AU - Vuillerme, Nicolas
AU - Samani, Afshin
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The detection of variations in mental demands is a key factor for optimizing the balance between occupational health and work performance. With the advances in heart rate acquisition technologies, heart rate monitoring is now easy and affordable. In this study, we recorded the heart rate of 18 healthy young participants while they performed three consecutive 5-min cyclic computer tasks with low, medium and high mental demands in two days with at least one week apart. The cycles began with memorizing a pattern of connected points following by the disappearance of the pattern, and then replicating it using computer mouse clicks on an incomplete version of the pattern. The mental demand of the tasks was manipulated by changing the complexity of the displayed patterns. The participants rated their perceived mental load after each task. The mean, range, and standard deviation of heart rate, MHR, RHR, and SDHR respectively, along with the performance (in terms of accuracy and speed of pattern replication) for each cycle was calculated and averaged for each task. The RHR and SDHR increased with increasing mental demands (p < 0.001), whereas the MHR did not significantly change in response to the different task demands. The responses remained consistent across days for RHR, MHR, but not SDHR. As expected, the performance decreased and the perceived mental load increased as the task demands increased. These results suggest that the variations in heart rate would provide useful information regarding the quantification of mental load.
AB - The detection of variations in mental demands is a key factor for optimizing the balance between occupational health and work performance. With the advances in heart rate acquisition technologies, heart rate monitoring is now easy and affordable. In this study, we recorded the heart rate of 18 healthy young participants while they performed three consecutive 5-min cyclic computer tasks with low, medium and high mental demands in two days with at least one week apart. The cycles began with memorizing a pattern of connected points following by the disappearance of the pattern, and then replicating it using computer mouse clicks on an incomplete version of the pattern. The mental demand of the tasks was manipulated by changing the complexity of the displayed patterns. The participants rated their perceived mental load after each task. The mean, range, and standard deviation of heart rate, MHR, RHR, and SDHR respectively, along with the performance (in terms of accuracy and speed of pattern replication) for each cycle was calculated and averaged for each task. The RHR and SDHR increased with increasing mental demands (p < 0.001), whereas the MHR did not significantly change in response to the different task demands. The responses remained consistent across days for RHR, MHR, but not SDHR. As expected, the performance decreased and the perceived mental load increased as the task demands increased. These results suggest that the variations in heart rate would provide useful information regarding the quantification of mental load.
KW - Heart rate variability
KW - Neuroergonomics
KW - Occupational healthcare
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-10-9038-7_69
DO - 10.1007/978-981-10-9038-7_69
M3 - Article in proceeding
AN - SCOPUS:85048234453
SN - 978-981-10-9037-0
VL - 2
T3 - IFMBE Proceedings
SP - 367
EP - 370
BT - World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering 2018
A2 - Lhotska, Lenka
A2 - Sukupova, Lucie
A2 - Lacković, Igor
A2 - Ibbott, Geoffrey S.
PB - Springer
T2 - World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, WC 2018
Y2 - 3 June 2018 through 8 June 2018
ER -