title: Into the Wild: Neuroergonomic Differentiation of Hand-Held and Augmented Reality Wearable Displays during Outdoor Navigation with Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy.
abstract: Highly mobile computing devices promise to improve quality of life, productivity, and performance. Increased situation awareness and reduced mental workload are two potential means by which this can be accomplished. However, it is difficult to measure these concepts in the "wild". We employed ultra-portable battery operated and wireless functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to non-invasively measure hemodynamic changes in the brain's Prefrontal cortex (PFC). Measurements were taken during navigation of a college campus with either a hand-held display, or an Augmented reality wearable display (ARWD). Hemodynamic measures were also paired with secondary tasks of visual perception and auditory working memory to provide behavioral assessment of situation awareness and mental workload. Navigating with an augmented reality wearable display produced the least workload during the auditory working memory task, and a trend for improved situation awareness in our measures of prefrontal hemodynamics. The hemodynamics associated with errors were also different between the two devices. Errors with an augmented reality wearable display were associated with increased prefrontal activity and the opposite was observed for the hand-held display. This suggests that the cognitive mechanisms underlying errors between the two devices differ. These findings show fNIRS is a valuable tool for assessing new technology in ecologically valid settings and that ARWDs offer benefits with regards to mental workload while navigating, and potentially superior situation awareness with improved display design.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Human Factors and Applied Cognition, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McKendrick
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Human Factors and Applied Cognition, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Raja
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Parasuraman
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Human Factors and Applied Cognition, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Rabia
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Murtza
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Human Factors and Applied Cognition, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Alice
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Formwalt
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Human Factors and Applied Cognition, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Wendy
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Baccus
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Human Factors and Applied Cognition, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Paczynski
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, Drexel UniversityPhiladelphia, PA, USA; Department of Family and Community Health, University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA, USA; Division of General Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Hasan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ayaz
keywords: fNIRS; head-mounted display; mental workload; neuroergonomics; situation awareness; spatial navigation; working memory