Participant wearing physiological sensors while preparing pour-over coffee
Figure 2. A participant wearing an eye tracker and Empatica E4 during the pour-over coffee task. Source: Basnet et al. (2026).

Dr. Yunmei Liu is a co-author of “Cognitive Workload Assessment in Procedural Tasks,” published online in Human Factors on September 2, 2026. The collaborative paper is first-authored by Niosh Basnet.

Understanding Workload as Tasks Unfold

The study examined 30 participants completing cooking tasks under routine conditions and conditions involving disruptions and time pressure. Researchers combined self-reported workload with eye and skin-conductance measures to examine how demands changed during the tasks.

Individual disruptions could produce brief increases in workload, while accumulating anomalies could sustain higher demands. The physiological measures differed in their sensitivity, with blink rate providing a useful indicator in this task setting. These findings can inform assistance that responds to both immediate difficulties and the cumulative demands of procedural work.

Read the publication in Human Factors