title: Electrocardiographic features for the measurement of drivers' mental workload.
abstract: This study examines the effect of mental workload on the electrocardiogram (ECG) of participants driving the Lane Change Task (LCT). Different levels of mental workload were induced by a secondary task (n-back task) with three levels of difficulty. Subjective data showed a significant increase of the experienced workload over all three levels. An exploratory approach was chosen to extract a large number of rhythmical and morphological features from the ECG signal thereby identifying those which differentiated best between the levels of mental workload. No single rhythmical or morphological feature was able to differentiate between all three levels. A group of parameters were extracted which were at least able to discriminate between two levels. For future research, a combination of features is recommended to achieve best diagnosticity for different levels of mental workload.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human and Industrial Engineering (ifab), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstrasse 12, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany. Electronic address: tobias.heine@kit.edu.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Heine
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Fritz-Haber-Weg 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
authors.forename: Gustavo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lenis
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Fritz-Haber-Weg 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reichensperger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human and Industrial Engineering (ifab), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstrasse 12, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beran
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Fritz-Haber-Weg 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
authors.forename: Olaf
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Doessel
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human and Industrial Engineering (ifab), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstrasse 12, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Deml
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000523:psychology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004562:Electrocardiography; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Driving; Electrocardiogram; Feature comparison; Heart rate variability; Mental workload; Wave morphology