Secondary-task assessment of workload: neuropsychological considerations for applied psychology

The secondary-task paradigm has enjoyed considerable success as an assessment technique for operators' workload. However, during the past several years experimental neuropsychologists have employed an almost identical paradigm in their research investigating cerebral lateralization of function. To date, these areas of literature have existed as relatively isolated bodies of work, largely due to the differences between the disciplines. In the present manuscript is a brief review of the results from neuropsychological secondary-task studies and a consideration of these results in terms of their implications for the measurement of operators' workload.