Brain Activity during Tactical Decision-Making. 4. Event-Related Potentials as Indices of Selective Attention and Cognitive Workload

摘要

The demands of modern combat systems have the potential for exceeding the capacity of the human to accurately process information, especially during times of great stress. The capacity of the human to perceive, integrate, remember, and use information may be challenged when the individual is flying aircraft, monitoring radar and sonar displays, or operating electronic warfare systems. Exceeding the capacity of the human operator in such situations may impair decision-making and could result in costly tactical errors. Although much is being done to improve the reliability of combat systems, not enough is being done to improve the system operators. For these reasons, the most unpredictable element in combat systems is the human operator. Years of personnel testing have not eliminated this unpredictability. In part, this is because traditional testing methods tend to measure what a person knows rather than how a person thinks and processes information. This research is driven by the Navy's need for better methods of assessing combat system operators, particularly for predicting the ability of operators to continue to make accurate decisions under heavy workloads. This report, the fourth in a series of reports concerned with the use of neuroelectric signals to predict the decision-making performance of combat system operators, provides detailed analyses of the neuroelectric changes that occur as workload increases in a combat system simulation. (KR)