Increased impulsive behavior under cognitive load: a case-study on dominant hand usage during a cooperative human-robot Pick-and-Place task

Cognitive load impacts human perception and behavior due to binding of cognitive resources, which influences cognitive processing in the brain towards mentalistic versus mechanistic pathways. This paper investigates potentially increasing impulsive behavior in case of increased cognitive load within a strongly controlled human-robot cooperative pick-and-place primary task, where paerticipants are required to use their left and right hands according to predefined sequences (study 1: suggestive guidance by robot; study 2: left and right alternating). A within-subjects design study is conducted with cognitive load being varied by a secondary task (math task) with variation of difficulty. Significant results show an increase of consequential task failures due to dominant hand errors, i.e. use of the dominant hand, when secondary hand is required, with increased cognitive load level, which indicates an increase of impulsive behavior, which may have adverse effects in cooperative human-robot interaction and safety and should be considered in future human-robot interaction applications, like cooperative manufacturing.