Multimodal Recognition of the Stress When Performing Cognitive Tasks Under Limited Time Conditions

In the usual human cognitive performance, the speed of the human-computer interaction is not critical, but in emergent technologies and in a high stream of information in a learning process, a human (learner) ability to process teaching tasks can be limited by the human abilities or lead to this human’s stress as a physiological “cost” of his/her successful performance. The goal of the paper is to carry out the comparison analysis of the speed and reliability of cognitive activity by subjects performing computer tasks at a free and fixed pace, considering the physiological “cost” of such activities to reveal potential preliminary markers of stress. We have studied 4 group of indices of subjects’ cognitive test performance: 1) operational - test performance including direct indices (rate of tasks solving, reliability) and their secondary indices including general productivity; 2) subjective test indices before and after test performance; 3) physiological support of activity by indices of the cardiovascular system; 4) indices of electropuncture diagnostics. Besides, to account external factors of possible influence on a human cognitive work, we used indices of the solar wind and geomagnetic field. The time limitations make a human more sensitive to external physical factors and influence his psychological state in addition to physiological regulation that can be considered as a stress condition of activity. This result has confirmed our guess that multimodal description is more effective to reveal a stress during cognitive activity of a simple nature.