How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload

Recent work has demonstrated that functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy has the potential to measure changes in Mental Workload with increasing ecological validity. It is not clear, however, whether these measurements are affected by anxiety and stress of the workload, where our informal observation...

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Main Authors: Alsuraykh, Norah H., Maior, Horia A., Wilson, Max L., Tennent, Paul, Sharples, Sarah
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50655/
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author Alsuraykh, Norah H.
Maior, Horia A.
Wilson, Max L.
Tennent, Paul
Sharples, Sarah
author_facet Alsuraykh, Norah H.
Maior, Horia A.
Wilson, Max L.
Tennent, Paul
Sharples, Sarah
author_sort Alsuraykh, Norah H.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Recent work has demonstrated that functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy has the potential to measure changes in Mental Workload with increasing ecological validity. It is not clear, however, whether these measurements are affected by anxiety and stress of the workload, where our informal observations see some participants enjoying the workload and succeeding in tasks, while others worry and struggle with the tasks. This research evaluated the effects of stress on fNIRS measurements and performance, using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task to manipulate the experience of stress. While our results largely support this hypothesis, our conclusions were undermined by data from the Rest condition, which indicated that Mental Workload and Stress were often higher than during tasks. We hypothesize that participants were experiencing anxiety in anticipation of subsequent stress tasks. We discuss this hypothesis and present a revised study designed to better control for this result.
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institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
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publishDate 2018
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spelling nottingham-506552018-04-24T14:49:30Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50655/ How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload Alsuraykh, Norah H. Maior, Horia A. Wilson, Max L. Tennent, Paul Sharples, Sarah Recent work has demonstrated that functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy has the potential to measure changes in Mental Workload with increasing ecological validity. It is not clear, however, whether these measurements are affected by anxiety and stress of the workload, where our informal observations see some participants enjoying the workload and succeeding in tasks, while others worry and struggle with the tasks. This research evaluated the effects of stress on fNIRS measurements and performance, using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task to manipulate the experience of stress. While our results largely support this hypothesis, our conclusions were undermined by data from the Rest condition, which indicated that Mental Workload and Stress were often higher than during tasks. We hypothesize that participants were experiencing anxiety in anticipation of subsequent stress tasks. We discuss this hypothesis and present a revised study designed to better control for this result. 2018-04-20 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed application/pdf en https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50655/1/CHI2018-fNIRSstress-v19-NHHMMW.pdf Alsuraykh, Norah H., Maior, Horia A., Wilson, Max L., Tennent, Paul and Sharples, Sarah (2018) How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload. In: CHI 2018: ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Extended Abstracts), 21-26 April 2018, Montreal, Canada. (In Press) fNIRS; BCI; Stress; Mental Workload; SSSQ; MIST; Distress; Engagement; Worry; Anxiety
spellingShingle fNIRS; BCI; Stress; Mental Workload; SSSQ; MIST; Distress; Engagement; Worry; Anxiety
Alsuraykh, Norah H.
Maior, Horia A.
Wilson, Max L.
Tennent, Paul
Sharples, Sarah
How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload
title How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload
title_full How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload
title_fullStr How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload
title_full_unstemmed How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload
title_short How stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements of mental workload
title_sort how stress affects functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fnirs) measurements of mental workload
topic fNIRS; BCI; Stress; Mental Workload; SSSQ; MIST; Distress; Engagement; Worry; Anxiety
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50655/