Subsidiary Radio Communications Tasks for Workload Assessment in R&D Simulations. II. Task Sensitivity Evaluation

摘要

Because of the rapid growth of the technological complexity of modern aircraft and weapon systems, the assessment of operator workload at each stage of system design is of increasing importance. Secondary task measures of workload sensitive, reliable indicators of how hard the operator is working. One solution to these problems would be to employ secondary tasks which not only are an integral part of the operator's duties but also possess the properties of valid measurement tasks. The first in a series of such studies was performed and is described in this report. After extensive training on both single and dual tasks, six subjects were exposed to all possible combinations of eight communications tasks and two levels of single-axis tracking task difficulty. Dependent measures were the number of control losses on the tracking task and the accuracy and response times for the verbal and manual responses to the communication tasks. Results indicate that realistic radio activities can be used as secondary tasks to provide objective measures of workload.