Hormonal responses to a graded mental workload.

Three mental arithmetic tests of graded difficulty were presented to eight young male volunteers on consecutive days. The effort compensation patterns were investigated using urinary catecholamines and salivary cortisol. A significant increase in adrenaline excretion was found in response to all three tests. Urinary adrenaline was partially graded according to the level of difficulty of the tests. The response patterns to mental workload also included a significantly lower noradrenaline/adrenaline ratio and a higher adrenaline/dopamine ratio after the tests. No significant increase was found after the tests for noradrenaline and dopamine. Changes in salivary cortisol concentration during the tests were graded with respect to test difficulty between the easiest and both of the more difficult tests. Salivary cortisol concentration changes are proposed as the basis for field observations involving mental workload. It is concluded that mental workload causes distinguishable effort compensation patterns and that under certain conditions urinary adrenaline and salivary cortisol allow one to distinguish different mental workload levels.