ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ind. Eng.
Sec. Ergonomics and Human Factors
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fieng.2025.1605975
Cognitive Ergonomics: Triangulation of Physiological, Subjective, and Performance-Based Mental Workload Assessments
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden
- 2Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Vastra Gotaland County, Sweden
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As the manufacturing assembly industry advances, increased customizations and product variety results in operators' executing more cognitively complex tasks. To bridge these cognitive challenges, the assessment of operators' health and performance in relation to their tasks has become an increasingly important topic in the field of cognitive ergonomics. This paper examines operators' mental workload through an integrated approach by implementing measures covering different mental workload signals: physiological, performance-based, and subjective. In this study, four validated mental workload instruments were used and their correlation levels were evaluated: error rate, completion time, the Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME), and Heart Rate Variability (HRV). The task was to build a 3D-printed drone and the results indicate that three out of four mental workload measures significantly correlate and can effectively be used to support the assessment of mental workload. More specifically, error rate, completion time, and RSME. Since current literature has stressed the importance of developing a multidimensional mental workload assessment framework, this paper contributes with new findings applicable to the manufacturing assembly industry.
Keywords: Mental Workload Assessments, Cognitive ergonomics, HRV, Assembly, Industry 5.0
Received: 04 Apr 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fogelberg, Cao and Thorvald. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Peter Thorvald, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden
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