As Digital Manufacturing transforms traditionally physical work into more system-monitoring tasks, new methods are required for understanding people’s mental workload and prolonged capacity for focused attention. Many physiological measures have shown promise for detecting changes in cognitive state, and recent advances in sensor technology offer minimally-invasive ways to monitor our cognitive activity. Previous research in functional near-infrared spectroscopy, for example, has observed changes in cerebral hemodynamic response during periods of high demand within tasks. This work investigated the relationships among task demand, fatigue, and attention degradation in a sustained attention task, and their effect on heart rate, breathing rate, nose temperature and hemodynamic response in the prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus. Analysis revealed a small but significant effect of fatigue on heart rate relative to baseline, breathing rate and hemodynamic response. Task demand had a small but significant effect on breathing rate and nose temperature, both relative to baseline, but no difference between levels of demand was observed in heart rate or hemodynamic response. Our results provide insight into what physiological data can tell us about cognitive state, ability to focus, and the impact of fatigue over time.

随着数字制造将传统的体力劳动转变为更多的系统监视任务，需要新的方法来理解人们的心理工作量和长时间集中注意力的能力。许多生理学方法已显示出检测认知状态变化的希望，并且传感器技术的最新进展提供了微创方法来监测我们的认知活动。例如，以前在功能近红外光谱学方面的研究已经观察到在任务内需求量很大时脑血流动力学反应会发生变化。这项工作调查了持续关注任务中任务需求，疲劳和注意力下降之间的关系，以及它们对前额叶皮层和中颞回中心率，呼吸频率，鼻子温度和血液动力学响应的影响。分析显示，相对于基线，呼吸频率和血液动力学反应，疲劳对心率有微小但显着的影响。相对于基线，任务需求对呼吸频率和鼻子温度有很小但显着的影响，但是心率或血液动力学反应方面需求水平之间没有差异。我们的结果提供了洞察力，哪些生理数据可以告诉我们有关认知状态，专注能力以及疲劳的影响。