A tool for measuring mental workload during prosthesis use: The Prosthesis Task Load Index (PROS-TLX)

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285382
• Publication Date: 2023-05-04T17:55:51Z
• Authors: Johnny V. V. Parr; Adam Galpin; Liis Uiga; Ben Marshall; David J. Wright; Zoe C. Franklin; Greg Wood
• Keywords: Situational ethics; Situation Awareness

When using a upper-limb prosthesis, mental, emotional, and physical effort is often experienced. These have been linked to high rates of device dissatisfaction rejection. Therefore, understanding quantifying the complex nature workload experienced when using, or learning use, prosthesis has practical clinical importance for researchers applied professionals. The aim this paper was design validate self-report measure mental specific use (The Prosthesis Task Load Index; PROS-TLX) that encapsulates array physical, emotional demands by users these devices. We first surveyed prosthetic limb who confirmed eight constructs taken from published literature previous measures. were demands, visual conscious processing, frustration, situational stress, time pressure uncertainty. To during initial learning, we then asked able-bodied participants complete coin-placement task their anatomical hand myoelectric simulator under low workload. As expected, resulted in slower movements, more errors, greater tendency visually fixate (indexed eye-tracking equipment). changes performance accompanied significant increases PROS-TLX subscales. scale also found good convergent divergent validity. Further work required whether can provide meaningful insights