Experimental Ergonomics

The objective measurement of mental stress in the workplace and its effect on information processing require new methods, which the team is developing. The researchers thus form the bridge between the basis and application in ergonomics.

Leader
Prof. Dr. Edmund Wascher
Secretariat
Judith Geiger
Address
Ardeystr. 67
44139 Dortmund

Head of Department

Information processing is an essential part of modern workplaces. Incorrect and too much information can lead to mental stress, which in turn has a negative effect on information processing. Elementary work has been done on this circuit so far, separately for basic research and application areas. One aim of the work in the research group is to close the gap between the study of specific aspects of information processing and the recording of mental stress in the highly controlled laboratory and applied research in natural environments, which has so far been dominated by subjective assessment. This is done by developing new applications and analyses based on mobile EEG.

Three aspects are at the centre of the work of Experimental Ergonomics: 1) The systematic evaluation of the influence of external and internal factors on mental stress and information processing in the laboratory. 2) The applied establishment of mobile EEG measurements and scenarios with varying degrees of naturalness, and 3) The development of methods to extract parameters of mental strain and cognitive processing from the EEG, including recordings in completely unrestricted and uncontrolled environments. The latter also involved the use of machine learning in EEG analysis. In this way, the group was able to establish completely new approaches to mental demands in the workplace.