title: Effect of cognitive load on speech prosody in aviation: Evidence from military simulator flights.
abstract: Mental overload directly affects safety in aviation and needs to be alleviated. Speech recordings are obtained non-invasively and as such are feasible for monitoring cognitive load. We recorded speech of 13 military pilots while they were performing a simulator task. Three types of cognitive load (load on situation awareness, information processing and decision making) were rated by a flight instructor separately for each flight phase and participant. As a function of increased cognitive load, the mean utterance-level fundamental frequency (F0) increased, on average, by 7 Hz and the mean vocal intensity increased by 1 dB. In the most intensive simulator flight phases, mean F0 increased by 12 Hz and mean intensity, by 1.5 dB. At the same time, the mean F0 range decreased by 5 Hz, on average. Our results showed that prosodic features of speech can be used to monitor speaker state and support pilot training in a simulator environment.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Clinical Medicine/Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University of Oulu, Finland. kerttu.huttunen@oulu.fi
authors.forename: Kerttu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Huttunen
authors.forename: Heikki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Keränen
authors.forename: Eero
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Väyrynen
authors.forename: Rauno
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pääkkönen
authors.forename: Tuomo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Leino
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000337:Aerospace Medicine; D000401:Aircraft; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003657:Decision Making; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology*