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Abstract Assessing cognitive load in work environments is of utmost importance, as suboptimal levels have been shown to lead to distractions, stress, and physical injuries. Despite this, traditional methods for measuring cognitive load present known logistical and methodological issues: while self-reported measures suffer from poor construct validity, physiological measures often require expensive instruments and time-consuming calibration. In recent years, research has linked blink rate (i.e., the number of eye blinks per minute) with cognitive load, showing a higher blink rate with increased load. Although this suggests that blink rate can be an effective indicator of load, scientific-grade eye-trackers are usually expensive and invasive, making them unsuitable for work environments. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the accuracy of a camera-based approach to measure blink rate using a widely available generic webcam. To test this, we employed two tasks that resemble computer tasks common in office and manufacturing settings. Our results showed that the camera-based approach measured cognitive load as accurately as a scientific-grade eye-tracker. These findings are crucial as they provide an affordable alternative to expensive and invasive instruments for measuring cognitive load in the workplace.
Vasta et al. (Mon,) studied this question.