Psycho-physiological analysis of mental workload at an elevated work place

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to make a psycho-physiological analysis in order to study the degree of mental workload at an elevated place. Two experiments were carried out on 10 scaffolding workers and 10 office workers (seven in Experiment 2), who were made to walk along the footing boards of a temporary scaffold. In Experiment 1, the psycho-physiological responses of the subjects were measured. In experiment 2, the subjects' spare capacity at an elevated place was measured using a dual task method. The results did not indicate any clear physiological response due to height elevation, although an increase in mental workload caused by the height was observed and secondary task performance fell at an elevated place in the office workers. The effect of the height was less noticeable on the scaffolding workers than on the office workers, but their spare capacity at that height decreased as the task demand increased due to narrower footing boards or increased task difficulty.