Citation

Jiménez R, Cardenas D, Anera RG, Jiménez JR, Vera J. Ergonomics 2018; 61(4): 506-516.

Affiliation

Mixed University Sport and Health Institute (iMUDS), University of Granada , Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00140139.2017.1395913

PMID

29054132

Abstract

This study assessed the effect of two perceptually matched mental tasks with different levels of mental demand on ocular aberrations in a group of young adults. We measured ocular aberration with a wave-front sensor, and total, internal, and corneal RMS (root mean square) aberrations were calculated from Zernike coefficients, considering natural and scaled pupils (5, 4.5, and 4 mm). We found that total, internal, and corneal astigmatism RMS showed significant differences between mental tasks with natural pupils (p<.05), and this effect was maintained with 5 mm scaled pupils (total RMS astigmatism, p<.05). Consistently, pupil size, intraocular pressure, perceived mental load, and cognitive performance were influenced by the level of mental complexity (p<.05 for all). The findings suggest that ocular astigmatism aberration, mediated by intraocular pressure, could be an objective, valid, reliable index to evaluate the impact of cognitive processing in conjunction with others physiological markers in real world contexts. Practitioner Summary The search continues for a valid, reliable, convenient method of measuring mental workload. In this study we found ocular astigmatism aberration is sensitive to the cumulative effect of mental effort. It shows promise of being a novel ocular index which may help to assess mental workload in real situations.

Language: en

Keywords

astigmatism aberration; mental workload; ocular physiology; optical quality; pupil size