Development and validation of an assessment index for quantifying cognitive task load in pilots under simulated flight conditions using heart rate variability and principal component analysis.

ABSTRACT

To investigate whether high cognitive task load (CTL) for aircraft pilots can be identified by analysing heart-rate variability, electrocardiograms were recorded while cadet pilots (n = 68) performed the plane tracking, anti-gravity pedalling, and reaction tasks during simulated flight missions. Data for standard electrocardiogram parameters were extracted from the R-R-interval series. In the research phase, low frequency power (LF), high frequency power (HF), normalised HF, and LF/HF differed significantly between high and low CTL conditions (p < .05 for all). A principal component analysis identified three components contributing 90.62% of cumulative heart-rate variance. These principal components were incorporated into a composite index. Validation in a separate group of cadet pilots (n = 139) under similar conditions showed that the index value significantly increased with increasing CTL (p < .05). The heart-rate variability index can be used to objectively identify high CTL flight conditions.Practitioner summary: We used principal component analysis of electrocardiogram data to construct a composite index for identifying high cognitive task load in pilots during simulated flight. We validated the index in a separate group of pilots under similar conditions. The index can be used to improve cadet training and flight safety.Abbreviations ANOVA a one-way analysis of variance; AP anti-gravity pedaling task; CTL cognitive task load; ECG electrocardiograms; HR heart rate; HRV heart-rate variability; HRVI heart-rate variability index; PT plane-tracking task; RMSSD root-mean square of differences between consecutive R-R intervals; RT reaction task; SDNN standard deviation of R-R intervals; HF high frequency power; HFnu normalized HF; LF low frequency power; LFnu normalized LF; PCA principal component analysis.