Abstract

The objective of the present research is to quantify the changes in cognitive workload and mental capacity from EEG signals when people are conducting complex cognitive activities. Design activities are good examples of complex cognitive activities that require simultaneous involvements of multiple cognitive functions including problem understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. As one of the fundamental human activities, design activities are where a designer’s mental effort is applied to create product descriptions (design solutions) from an initial design problem, which involves looping and jumping among design problems, design knowledge, and design solutions. Using design activities as a starting point, the present study conducted a series of theoretical analyses and literature reviews to identify the opportunities and challenges for applying EEG to quantify designers' cognitive changes, including cognitive workload and mental capacity. The research objectives were formulated based on my pilot studies in applying and extending the stress model, leading to the methodology of the present research. A new framework (tEEG framework) has been proposed to address the identified challenges as a result of our past research attempts and theoretical analyses, which also serves as the foundation for the present research. Afterward, the proposed tEEG framework was applied for quantitatively monitoring changes in people's cognitive workload and mental capacity within and beyond the context of design, where mental capacity was considered as the umbrella of numerous cognitive factors including cognitive control. Finally, my future research goal is to apply the quantification results on cognitive workload and mental capacity to improving human mental effort under complex cognitive activities, which corresponds to the second research objective of the present research. Along this direction, the present research proposes a quantitative approach to elaborate the impact of cognitive workload and mental capacity on mental effort that has been verified by simulation results. My future research will continue to test the approach in cognitive experiments including the ongoing N-back study, aiming to bridge the gap between most existing cognitive studies and their applications in real life.