Comparing workload and performance during demanding push force and mental tasks.

Area of Science:

• Ergonomics and Human Factors
• Occupational Health and Safety
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• The impact of combined physical and mental occupational tasks is not well understood.
• Research is needed to analyze physical effort (pushing force) and mental effort (arithmetic problems) concurrently.

Purpose of the Study:

• To simulate and assess workload under combined and simultaneous physical and mental demands in a controlled laboratory setting.
• To compare task completion time and performance between combined and simultaneous task execution.

Main Methods:

• Participants exerted push force at varying levels (low, medium, high) and solved arithmetic problems concurrently or sequentially.
• Two conditions were tested: combined (physical then mental) and simultaneous (both at once).
• Workload was assessed using NASA-TLX Traditional and NASA-TLX RAW.

Main Results:

• Task completion time was significantly longer in the combined approach compared to the simultaneous approach.
• Task performance was significantly higher in the combined approach than in the simultaneous approach.
• Traditional NASA-TLX indicated a significantly higher global workload index than NASA-TLX RAW.

Conclusions:

• A combined approach to physical and mental tasks yields superior performance compared to simultaneous execution.
• The traditional NASA-TLX is more sensitive to global workload than the RAW version.