Bio-behavioral modeling of workload and performance

Abstract

Research on adaptive systems based on human psychophysiological assessments has been growing rapidly over the last decade. One fundamental component of such a system is human state assessment, on which the adaptation depends, at least partly. This is critical as the confidence of operators in such system will be determined to some extent by the accuracy of the models responsible for the assessment. This chapter presents work carried out in order to better understand the relationship between bio-behavioral data, psychological state, and operational performance of the operators. Modeling physiological parameters and performance was performed through a manipulation of three factors. The first factor was the size of smoothing window for performance. The second factor was the performance decrement threshold for labelling functional and sub-functional states. Finally, the third factor was the mode of classification being either prospective or descriptive. We used two types of classifiers, a linear and a non-linear classifier, and compared performance. Insights emerging from this work support that the use of multiple sources of bio-behavioral data, combined in a non-linear fashion, increases the psychometric qualities of state classifiers. This suggests that if such systems are to be used in safety-critical systems, they should be implemented using a wide variety of sensors to increase classification accuracies of performance.