Galoyan Tamara, Betts Kristen, Abramian Hovag, Reddy Pratusha, Izzetoglu Kurtulus, Shewokis Patricia A
Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
School of Education, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Brain Sci. 2021 Jan 4;11(1):45. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11010045.
The goal of this study was to examine the effects of task-related variables, such as the difficulty level, problem scenario, and experiment week, on performance and mental workload of 27 healthy adult subjects during problem solving within the spatial navigation transfer (SNT) game. The study reports task performance measures such as total time spent on a task (TT) and reaction time (RT); neurophysiological measures involving the use of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS); and a subjective rating scale for self-assessment of mental workload (NASA TLX) to test the related hypotheses. Several within-subject repeated-measures factorial ANOVA models were developed to test the main hypothesis. The results revealed a number of interaction effects for the dependent measures of TT, RT, fNIRS, and NASA TLX. The results showed (1) a decrease in TT and RT across the three levels of difficulty from Week 1 to Week 2; (2) an increase in TT and RT for high and medium cognitive load tasks as compared to low cognitive load tasks in both Week 1 and Week 2; (3) an overall increase in oxygenation from Week 1 to Week 2. These findings confirmed that both the behavioral performance and mental workload were sensitive to task manipulations.
本研究的目的是考察任务相关变量，如难度水平、问题情境和实验周，对27名健康成年受试者在空间导航转移（SNT）游戏中解决问题时的表现和心理负荷的影响。该研究报告了任务表现指标，如完成一项任务的总时间（TT）和反应时间（RT）；涉及使用功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）的神经生理学指标；以及用于自我评估心理负荷的主观评分量表（NASA TLX），以检验相关假设。开发了几个受试者内重复测量析因方差分析模型来检验主要假设。结果揭示了TT、RT、fNIRS和NASA TLX等因变量的一些交互效应。结果表明：（1）从第1周到第2周，在三个难度水平上TT和RT均下降；（2）在第1周和第2周，与低认知负荷任务相比，高认知负荷和中等认知负荷任务的TT和RT均增加；（3）从第1周到第2周，氧合总体增加。这些发现证实，行为表现和心理负荷对任务操作均敏感。
