Pilot mental workload measurement and evaluation under dual task

In order to research the sensitivity of the ERP component P300 to mental workload which was related to flight task, a dual task was performed. In the primary task, the subjects needed to accomplish the whole dynamic process of flight simulation in a flight simulator, including take off, cruise and landing. During the process of flight simulation, subjects needed to monitor the information targets presented in the simulation model of head-up display (HUD) and made a response to abnormal information. The mental workload was manipulated by setting the quantities and refresh frequencies of the target information to be responded. The secondary task was the visual probes task under the oddball paradigm. 30 Electroencephalographic (EEG) activities were recorded simultaneously. The experiment results revealed that with the increase of primary task difficulty, the accuracy rates of the primary and secondary tasks were both decrease, as well as the reaction times were extended. The main effect of mental workload was significant to the peak amplitude and peak latency of P300, showing that under the high mental workload, the P300 peak amplitude decreased and the peak latency extended compared to that of the low mental workload. The results suggested that P300 component was sensitive to the flight task-irrelevant mental workload, and it might provide some effective electrophysiological evidence for mental workload evaluation in complex flight tasks.