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An on-road assessment of the impact of cognitive workload on physiological arousal in young adult drivers

Published: 21 September 2009 Publication History

Abstract

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.

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  1. An on-road assessment of the impact of cognitive workload on physiological arousal in young adult drivers

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        cover image ACM Other conferences
        AutomotiveUI '09: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
        September 2009
        143 pages
        ISBN:9781605585710
        DOI:10.1145/1620509

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

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        Published: 21 September 2009

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        Author Tags

        1. cognitive workload
        2. detecting driver state
        3. driver distraction
        4. driving performance
        5. physiology

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