Argus, a System for Varying Cognitive Workload

Argus is a system developed to support research to understand and measure cognitive workload. It consists of a single-subject and a team version. Research with the single-subject version is concerned with cognitive workload from a dynamic micro-strategy perspective; the team version seeks to identify communication protocols and decision aids that support team performance under high workload conditions. Workload is varied by the experimenter through a set of authoring tools. In the single-subject version, multiple tasks, a decision task and/or a tracking task, multiple display interfaces and input modes further enhance the variability of task workload. In the team version, communication between team members is accomplished through text and data messages sent between workstations.