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The Dissociation between Subjective Workload and Performance: A Multiple Resource Approach

1983; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/154193128302700314

0163-5182

Christopher D. Wickens, Yei‐Yu Yeh,

Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

A theory of the dissociation between subjective measures of mental workload and performance is described. The theory proposes that subjective measures are heavily driven by the number of tasks or task elements that a subject must perform concurrently. However they are relatively less sensitive to whether these tasks compete for common or separate resources, and to the difficulty of a single task, particularly if this difficulty is related to response factors. Performance, on the other hand, is particularly influenced by single task difficulty of both a perceptual and response nature and by resource competition between tasks. A set of three experiments are described to examine the dissociation between subjective difficulty measures and performance. These experiments employ different combinations of three tasks: Tracking, memory search, and a simulated air traffic control problem. The results supported all forms of dissociation predicted by the theory and the implications of results to workload measurement are discussed.