Nickel Peter, Nachreiner Friedhelm
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Department of Psychology, Oldenburg, Germany.
Hum Factors. 2003;45(4):575-90. doi: 10.1518/hfes.45.4.575.27094.
We investigated whether the 0.1-Hz component of heart rate variability (HRV) allows one to discriminate among levels of mental work stress induced by different types of tasks (diagnosticity) as well as among those induced by different levels of difficulty (sensitivity). Our 14 participants were presented 14 tasks of the Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development Standardized Tests for Research with Environmental Stressors battery in a repeated-measures design. Sufficient sensitivity was obtained for a discrimination between work and rest, but we found no support for a more fine-grained sensitivity. Concerning diagnosticity, only the grammatical reasoning task could be discriminated from all other tasks, indicating for this task a level of mental strain comparable to rest, which was in contrast with the results both for perceived difficulty and performance. We propose that HRV is an indicator for time pressure or emotional strain, not for mental workload, given that it seems to allow discrimination between tasks with and without pacing. Application of this research argues against using HRV as a measure of mental and especially cognitive workload, particularly where system safety or occupational risks may be at stake (e.g., when evaluating operator tasks or interface design in control room operations).
我们研究了心率变异性（HRV）的0.1赫兹成分是否能够让人区分不同类型任务所诱发的心理工作压力水平（诊断性）以及不同难度水平所诱发的心理工作压力水平（敏感性）。我们让14名参与者按照重复测量设计完成了航空航天研究与发展咨询小组环境应激源研究标准化测试电池中的14项任务。在区分工作和休息方面获得了足够的敏感性，但我们没有发现支持更精细敏感性的证据。关于诊断性，只有语法推理任务能够与所有其他任务区分开来，这表明该任务的心理压力水平与休息时相当，这与感知难度和表现的结果均形成了对比。我们提出，鉴于HRV似乎能够区分有时间限制和无时间限制的任务，它是时间压力或情绪压力的指标，而非心理工作量的指标。本研究的应用表明，反对将HRV用作心理尤其是认知工作量的度量指标，特别是在可能涉及系统安全或职业风险的情况下（例如，在评估控制室操作中的操作员任务或界面设计时）。
