How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload

Recent work has demonstrated that functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy has the potential to measure changes in Mental Workload with increasing ecological validity. It is not clear, however, whether these measurements are affected by anxiety and stress of the workload, where our informal observations see some participants enjoying the workload and succeeding in tasks, while others worry and struggle with the tasks. This research evaluated the effects of stress on fNIRS measurements and performance, using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task to manipulate the experience of stress. While our results largely support this hypothesis, our conclusions were undermined by data from the Rest condition, which indicated that Mental Workload and Stress were often higher than during tasks. We hypothesize that participants were experiencing anxiety in anticipation of subsequent stress tasks. We discuss this hypothesis and present a revised study designed to better control for this result

Does a workload influence the performance of bank employees?

A workload is one of contradictive variables, whether it influences the performance of employees or not. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether or not the workload influences the performance of bank employees. It employs quantitative approach and path analysis is employed to analyze the effect of workload on the performance of bank employees. The research samples include 74 bank employees around the City of Blitar, East Java, Indonesia. The result shows that a workload had a significant positive effect on the performance of bank employees. It also has greater influence on employee performance through motivation variables. The managerial implication of the current research is that the provision of workload which is in accordance with the competence and comfort of employees may improve their performance. In addition, employees who have higher education level are able to adjust more on the workload because they have higher-achievement motivation

Physiological Indicators of Task Demand, Fatigue, and Cognition in Future Digital Manufacturing Environments

As Digital Manufacturing transforms traditionally physical work into more system-monitoring tasks, new methods are required for understanding people's mental workload and prolonged capacity for focused attention. Many physiological measures have shown promise for detecting changes in cognitive state, and recent advances in sensor technology offer minimally-invasive ways to monitor our cognitive activity. Previous research in functional near-infrared spectroscopy, for example, has observed changes in cerebral hemodynamic response during periods of high demand within tasks. This work investigated the relationships among task demand, fatigue, and attention degradation in a sustained attention task, and their effect on heart rate, breathing rate, nose temperature and hemodynamic response in the prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus. Analysis revealed a small but significant effect of fatigue on heart rate relative to baseline, breathing rate and hemodynamic response. Task demand had a small but significant effect on breathing rate and nose temperature, both relative to baseline, but no difference between levels of demand was observed in heart rate or hemodynamic response. Our results provide insight into what physiological data can tell us about cognitive state, ability to focus, and the impact of fatigue over time