A Review of the Mental Workload Literature

The intent of this paper is to provide the reader with an overview of the mental workload literature. It will focus on other state of the art surveys with reference to some specific reports of the practical application of mental workload measurement. The surveys will be limited to those in English. Manzey reportedly provides a review of psychophysiological methods in German; a comparable, recent review in English was not found although a NATO RTO report (Wilson 2004, pp. 64-65 and Chapter 8) provides some guidance in this respect. Appendix 1 lists a search for references to workload measurement techniques using the GOOGLE search engine. The intent is to give the reader an appreciation of where work has been focused, or at least as reported on the Internet.