Applied Ergonomics 40 (2009) 963964

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Ergonomics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo

Editorial

Psychophysiology in ergonomics

Psychophysiology was dened by Andreassi (1995) as . the study of relations between psychological manipulations and resulting physiological responses, measured in the living organism, to promote the understanding of the mental and bodily processes (p. 1). This important and growing sub-discipline of psychology has been found to be very useful in applied areas, including human factors and ergonomics. In applying psychophysiological methods to human factors and ergonomics or related areas such as engineering psychology, the overall goal is often to improve the design of a system in regard to both system effectiveness and human well-being. In these applied settings, two types of human responses are of interest, namely mental responses (e.g., ratings of comfort, well-being, effort, perceived complexity of the humanmachine interaction) as well as the psychophysiological responses. Similar to the challenge of selecting the appropriate scales (dimensions) in survey design, the choice of appropriate psychophysiological measures has to be determined in ergonomics applications. Whereas some measures are relatively task-specic, such as using eye movements to track how operators use computer displays, other measures such as heart rate can be used as an indirect indicator of changes in behavior such as the use of heart rate to track emotional state. The sensitivity of various psychophysiological measures in a wide range of application areas is reviewed by Boucsein and Backs (2000). There is a large variety of psychophysiological measures that can be used in ergonomics applications but the measures most often used are: cardiovascular activity (e.g., heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, pulse wave velocity, and plethysmography), electroencephalography (EEG, event-related brain potentials, brain DC potentials, and event-related desynchronization), the electromyogram (to monitor the activity of specic muscles), skin activity (specic and non-specic responses with various methods), eye movements, body and skin temperature, and hormonal responses. The advantages of psychophysiological methods, in particular of electrophysiological methods, are twofold: (1) they are objective, and (2) they can be gathered in real time (i.e., at the same time as a critical behavior, with a time resolution down to milliseconds in the case of event-related brain potentials). In addition, measurement of psychophysiological responses enables the detection of reactions to task environments that are often hidden from human factors professionals, making possible more holistic evaluations of particular design environments. For example, one can determine the effects of background noise on operator state when the operator may not even be aware that this noise is having any detrimental effect (Trimmel and Poelzl, 2006).
0003-6870/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2009.02.003

The contributions in this special section edited by the guest editors Michael Trimmel (chair), Stephen Fairclough, and Robert Henning can only be partially representative of the many methods and applications of psychophysiology in ergonomics (a broad overview of applications can be found in Backs and Boucsein (2000)). Many of these contributions were initially presented in a symposium sponsored by PIE (Psychophysiology in Ergonomics, a technical group of the IEA: http://pie-iea.org/) at the 2006 Triennial Conference of the International Ergonomics Association in Maastricht. Each guest editor handled an equal share of the manuscripts by coordinating peer-reviews by at least two experts in the eld. Five of the eleven manuscripts provide contributions that are largely methodological in nature. Mulder, De Waard, and Dijksterhuis focused on a series of cardiovascular variables to index workload during a simulation of an ambulance dispatch task. Their paper uses an array of measures to quantify the sensitivity of the baroreex to levels of task demand. Kristjansson, Stern, Brown, and Rohrbaugh investigated the pupillary response during a reaction time task. Although pupillary measures have been studied previously with respect to attentional resources, this paper uses a modelling approach to assess levels of alertness. Miyake, Yamada, Shoji, Takae, Kuge, and Yamamura conducted repeated testing over several days to determine the reliability of selected measures of heart rate variability, cardiac function and skin response for assessing workload. Elkins, Muth, Hoover, Walker, Carpenter, and Switzer studied physiological compliance and team performance in order to identify the most appropriate measure for measuring physiological compliance in heart rate variability data, and to examine the relationship between compliance in the heart rate variability patterns of two team members and overall team performance. In a similar vein, Henning, Armstead, and Ferris investigated the compliance in heart rate variability patterns among four team members engaged in planning meetings over a six-month period, and tested if psychophysiological compliance during periods of speech was predictive of ratings of teamwork effectiveness. Three additional manuscripts focus on psychophysiological measures used for assessing mental workload and related variables as potential candidates for adaptive automation; that is, for systems which adjust the degree of automation based on the psychophysiological status of the operator. The manuscript by Hockey, Nickel, Roberts, and Roberts is concerned with psychophysiological measures of operator strain when task workload reaches high levels. These authors used EEG ratio measures and cardiovascular indices to index operator strain as a potential input to an adaptive automation system. Brookhuis, Van Driel, Hof, and Van Arem used cardiovascular measures to evaluate the mental workload associated with a Congestion Assistant in a driving simulator. These

964

Editorial / Applied Ergonomics 40 (2009) 963964

psychophysiological measures were combined with other variables (subjective measures, secondary task performance) to explore how the intervention of this agent technology inuenced drivers levels of stress and alertness. In another laboratory test of adaptive automation, Haarmann, Boucsein, and Schaefer conducted two consecutive studies to construct a biocybernetic adaptive system for a professional ight simulator based on electrodermal responses and cardiovascular measures. The three remaining manuscripts demonstrate how psychophysiology can be used to answer specic ergonomic questions in applied settings. Clarion, Petit, Morel, Chapon, and Collet investigated the physiological and behavioural changes associated with managing a secondary task while driving by measuring electrodermal activity, heart rate, and reaction time to evaluate drivers strain induced by performing several communication tasks while driving. Yagi investigated the effect of lutein supplementation on visual fatigue by recording EEG, EOG, heart rate, and facial muscle potential/performance during saccade tests. Van den Broek, Westerink, and van Herk recorded galvanic skin response and electromyographical signals in participants watching emotion-inducing lm fragments to explore the feasibility of emotion-aware consumer products. We hope you will nd this collection of manuscripts both informative about psychophysiology and potentially useful in your own area of applied ergonomics.

References
Andreassi, J.L., 1995. Psychophysiology: Human Behavior and Physiological Response. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Backs, R.W., Boucsein, W. (Eds.), 2000. Engineering Psychophysiology. Issues and Applications. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Boucsein, W., Backs, R.W., 2000. Engineering psychophysiology as a discipline: historical and theoretical aspects. In: Backs, R.W., Boucsein, W. (Eds.), Engineering Psychophysiology. Issues and Applications. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 330. Trimmel, M., Poelzl, G., 2006. Impact of background noise on reaction time and brain DC potential changes of VDT-based spatial attention. Ergonomics 49 (2), 202208.

Michael Trimmel* Centre for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Corresponding author. E-mail address: michael.trimmel@meduniwien.ac.at Stephen Fairclough School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK Robert Henning Psychology Department, University of Connecticut, USA