Heart rate variability changes during an auditory reaction time task in a simulated driving situation (original) (raw)
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Physiological indices of arousal generally increase when heightened demands are placed on an individual's cognitive resources. As a consequence, measures such as heart rate are frequently used as one method of assessing changes in workload. In a simulation study with young adult (19-23 yrs.) and late middle age (51-66 yrs.) drivers, heart rate responses were compared during a variety of dual task conditions along with driving and task performance data. During two of the tasks in which younger participants showed significant heart rate acceleration, older drivers, as a group, showed little or no change in heart rate. In this paper we present data on a more detailed analysis of the relationship between heart rate change and performance during one of the dual load conditions, a continuous performance task (CPT). The sample was subdivided into individuals who showed a substantive heart rate acceleration response during the task vs. those who showed little change or heart rate deceleration. Of the 18 younger and 15 older adults in the analysis, 56% of the younger and 27% of the older individuals fell into the heart rate acceleration category. Heart rate response did not correlate with performance on the CPT in the younger subjects. In the older subjects, however, the heart rate acceleration group scored significantly higher on the CPT than those who did not exhibit a pattern of heart rate acceleration. In addition to lower performance on the CPT task, older adults in the non-acceleration group showed a significant drop in driving speed, which is generally interpreted as a compensatory response employed to manage total workload. Overall, the late middle aged drivers who showed a heart rate accelerative response during the CPT task performed better on both the primary and secondary tasks than those that did not. The increase in heart rate in the late middle age drivers in this instance could serve as marker for a variety of important performance mediating variables including relative engagement in the task, availability of resources to invest in the dual tasks, attentional style, or overall flexibility of response. The results suggest the potential value of looking at differences in individual patterns of response in driving behavior studies in addition to overall group behavior. The presence of subtypes of heart rate responders, and the observed performance differences between subtypes in this paradigm, illustrate the importance of these considerations. Other heart rate patterning data from the literature is considered and suggestions for future investigation offered.
Jurnal Teknologi, 2016
Fatigue is a gradual process related with an effort to keep awake, eventually resulting in declination of human performance. It is one of the well-known risk factors for traffic accidents. The objective of this study is to understand the psychophysiological aspects of driver fatigue by using driving simulator. This study had focused on heart rate (HR) measures to determine drivers’ performance as this method can be measured in a less intrusive manner. Hence, in this study, 17 relevant studies were discussed, chosen from electronic databases. This study encompasses a range of subject areas, including concepts and theories of fatigue, driver fatigue, and psychophysiological indicators and countermeasures of driver fatigue. A variety of psychophysiological measures and parameters have been used in past research as indicators of fatigue. Based on this review, HR can assists researchers to determine performance according to a task demand, condition and its complexity. The review highlig...
Advances in Transportation Studies
Physiological indices of arousal generally increase when heightened demands are placed on an individual's cognitive resources. As a consequence, measures such as heart rate are frequently used as one method of assessing changes in workload. In a simulation study with young adult (19-23 yrs.) and late middle age (51-66 yrs.) drivers, heart rate responses were compared during a variety of dual task conditions along with driving and task performance data. During two of the tasks in which younger participants showed significant heart rate acceleration, older drivers, as a group, showed little or no change in heart rate. In this paper we present data on a more detailed analysis of the relationship between heart rate change and performance during one of the dual load conditions, a continuous performance task (CPT). The sample was subdivided into individuals who showed a substantive heart rate acceleration response during the task vs. those who showed little change or heart rate deceleration. Of the 18 younger and 15 older adults in the analysis, 56% of the younger and 27% of the older individuals fell into the heart rate acceleration category. Heart rate response did not correlate with performance on the CPT in the younger subjects. In the older subjects, however, the heart rate acceleration group scored significantly higher on the CPT than those who did not exhibit a pattern of heart rate acceleration. In addition to lower performance on the CPT task, older adults in the non-acceleration group showed a significant drop in driving speed, which is generally interpreted as a compensatory response employed to manage total workload. Overall, the late middle aged drivers who showed a heart rate accelerative response during the CPT task performed better on both the primary and secondary tasks than those that did not. The increase in heart rate in the late middle age drivers in this instance could serve as marker for a variety of important performance mediating variables including relative engagement in the task, availability of resources to invest in the dual tasks, attentional style, or overall flexibility of response. The results suggest the potential value of looking at differences in individual patterns of response in driving behavior studies in addition to overall group behavior. The presence of subtypes of heart rate responders, and the observed performance differences between subtypes in this paradigm, illustrate the importance of these considerations. Other heart rate patterning data from the literature is considered and suggestions for future investigation offered.
Respiration and Heart Rate Modulation Due to Competing Cognitive Tasks While Driving
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2019
Research works on operator monitoring underline the benefit of taking into consideration several signal modalities to improve accuracy for an objective mental state diagnosis. Heart rate (HR) is one of the most utilized systemic measures to assess cognitive workload (CW), whereas, respiration parameters are hardly utilized. This study aims at verifying the contribution of analyzing respiratory signals to extract features to evaluate driver's activity and CW variations in driving. Eighteen subjects participated in the study. The participants carried out two different cognitive tasks requiring different CW demands, a single task as well as a competing cognitive task realized while driving in a simulator. Our results confirm that both HR and breathing rate (BR) increase in driving and are sensitive to CW. However, HR and BR are differently modulated by the CW variations in driving. Specifically, HR is affected by both driving activity and CW, whereas, BR is suitable to evidence a variation of CW only when driving is not required. On the other hand, spectral features characterizing respiratory signal could be also used similarly to HR variability indices to detect high CW episodes. These results hint the use of respiration as an alternative to HR to monitor the driver mental state in autonomic vehicles in order to predict the available cognitive resources if the user has to take over the vehicle.
Transportation Research Record, 2009
such situations, physiological measures may show increased activation before the appearance of significant performance decrements. Although this position seems intuitively reasonable, to the best of the authors' knowledge, published data documenting this relationship in the driving literature is relatively sparse. If a temporal relationship does exist whereby shifts in physiological arousal indicate changes in mental workload before driving performance is impaired, knowledge of such a relationship may be useful in the development of advanced safety systems.
2009
In this paper, we describe changes in heart rate and skin conductance that result from an artificial manipulation of driver cognitive workload during an on-road driving study. Cognitive workload was increased systematically through three levels of an auditory delayed digit recall (n-back) task. Results show that changes in heart rate and skin conductance with increasing levels of workload are similar to those observed in an earlier simulation study. Heart rate increased in a step-wise fashion through the first two increases in load and then showed a less marked increase at the highest task level. Skin conductance increased most dramatically during the first level of the cognitive task and then appeared to more rapidly approach a ceiling (leveling) than heart rate. Findings further demonstrate the applicability of physiological indices for detecting changes in driver workload.
Cardiac Autonomic Control During Simulated Driving With a Concurrent Verbal Working Memory Task
Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2009
Objective: The objective of the study was to illustrate sensitivity and diagnosticity differences between cardiac measures and lane-keeping measures of driving performance. Background: Previous research suggests that physiological measures can be sensitive to the effects of driving and side task performance and diagnostic of the source of the attentional demands. We hypothesized that increases in side task difficulty would elicit physiological change without reduction of driving task performance and that the side task demands would elicit patterns of autonomic activity that map to specific attentional processing resources. Method: Separately and concurrently, thirty-two participants performed a simulated driving task and verbal working memory task (with two levels of difficulty, 0 back and 3 back) separately and concurrently. Attentional demands were assessed through physiological and performance measures. Results: Cardiac measures reflected changes in attentional demand from single-to dual-task driving with an n-back task, whereas lanekeeping measures did not. Furthermore, patterns of autonomic activity elicited by driving, n-back task, and dual-task driving with a 3-back task were consistent with our predictions about autonomic activity. Conclusion: Changes in cardiac measures without changes in lane-keeping measures provide evidence that cardiac measures can be sensitive to hidden costs in attention that do not manifest in coarse measures of driving performance. Furthermore, correct predictions regarding the patterns of autonomic activity elicited suggests that cardiac measures can serve as diagnostic tools for attention assessment. Application: Because of the demonstrated differences in sensitivity and diagnosticity, researchers should consider the use of cardiac measures in addition to driving performance measures when studying attention in a driving simulator environment.
Monitoring drivers’ mental workload in driving simulators using physiological measures
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2010
Many traffic accidents are caused by, or at least related to, inadequate mental workload, when it is either too low (vigilance) or too high (stress). Creating variations in mental workload and accident-prone driving for research purposes is difficult in the real world. In driving simulators the measurement of driver mental workload is relatively easily conducted by means of physiological measures, although good research skills are required and it is time-consuming. The fact that modern driving simulator environments are laboratory-equivalent nowadays allows full control with respect to environmental conditions, scenarios and stimuli, and enables physiological measurement of parameters of mental workload such as heart rate and brain activity. Several examples are presented to illustrate the potential of modern highstandard driving simulator environments regarding the monitoring of drivers' mental workload during task performance.
Effects of sound types and volumes on simulated driving, vigilance tasks and heart rate
2007
The objective was to determine whether specific types and volumes of sounds affect driving-related tasks. Participants completed six trials while exposed to different sound types (hard rock, classical music and industrial noise) and volumes (53 versus 95 db (A)). Participants executed a randomized order of tasks, involving: movement (MT), reaction time (RT), simulated driving (SimD), and non-conscious perception of masking stimuli. The results suggest high volumes impaired SimD, RT and MT. During hard rock music, accommodation HR was significantly higher whereas male RT was slower than female RT. However, RT was enhanced when subjects were exposed to hard rock music during a non-conscious task of longer duration. SimD crashes increased during quiet hard rock music in comparison to quiet industrial noise. Experimental HR was lower during quiet sound volumes for both genders. In summary, loud volumes affect simple vigilance whereas hard rock music may affect tasks involving concentration and attention especially with males.
Electrocardiographic features for the measurement of drivers' mental workload
Applied Ergonomics, 2017
This study examines the effect of mental workload on the electrocardiogram (ECG) of participants driving the Lane Change Task (LCT). Different levels of mental workload were induced by a secondary task (nback task) with three levels of difficulty. Subjective data showed a significant increase of the experienced workload over all three levels. An exploratory approach was chosen to extract a large number of rhythmical and morphological features from the ECG signal thereby identifying those which differentiated best between the levels of mental workload. No single rhythmical or morphological feature was able to differentiate between all three levels. A group of parameters were extracted which were at least able to discriminate between two levels. For future research, a combination of features is recommended to achieve best diagnosticity for different levels of mental workload.