Measurement of mental workload

By moving from the fact that mental workload causes pupil dilation, with thisresearch it is aimed to measure mental workload numerically by measuringlateral pupil changes which are created by mental workload resulting from taskdemand. Video record of pupil were taken from fixed disance by using a headmounted micro camera during performing the tasks, considered that they willcause mental workload, the tasks were presented on PC terminal. By this way,pupil dilations were recorded and measured on pictures without influencing thetask. This measures were compared with the reference pupil dimension valuesand determined the deviations considered that they are resulted by workload.To stimulate the brain 11 questions in 6 groups, prepared in different difficutylevels, were asked in mixed order. Additionally a psychomotor task was done byusing PC keyboard direction keys. On the other hand, NASA-TLX index, whichis commonly used to measure mental workload for cognitive tasks, were appliedto determine ?overall mental workload?. However, the verification of the resultsobtained from different indexes were expected, the reasons for diversificationwere tried to explain. It is expected that the measuring method applied in thisresearch can be a useful tool, for creating numerical values for designating thepeople who are effected much more than others for typical works or to defineworks which requires less workload. On the other hand, usage of this methodbecomes a management tool during decision making process, for personnelselection and replenishing activities. This work is an experimental research,based on rewieving of related literature and investigating the applied mentalworkload measurement methods. Being inspired by the work made in this area,in the first section of the thesis the problem, the aim of the research, theconstraints and the definitions were explained, in the second section based onrevieving the frame of theoretical works in this area were explained, in the thirdsection material and experimental method were explained, in the fourth sectionthe findings were presented. In the last section the results and recommendationswere summarized.