Modeling the cardiac indices of stress and performance of nuclear power plant operators during simulated fault scenarios

Abstract

Acute stress can affect cognitive processing and decrease performance in demanding, stressful situations. Here, we recorded the cardiac indices of stress, that is, the heart rate and heart rate variability together with the physical activity of nuclear power plant operators, and examined their association with crew performance, while the operator crews were managing simulated incident and accident situations. Crew performance was evaluated both by the operator instructor and as the time taken to resolve the situation. In total, 64% of the variance in the information‐seeking performance (adj‐R2 = .64, p < .01), and 41% of variation in the performance time (adj‐R2 = .41, p < .01) were explained by the psychophysiology. The cardiac measures indicated that increased stress was associated with poorer information‐seeking performance and longer performance time. Increased physical activity was associated with poorer information seeking only. Otherwise, crew performance was robust, as the diagnosis and corrective actions, use of emergency operations procedures, and collaboration, were only weakly associated with the stress physiology. The association between information‐seeking performance and stress might be explained by the larger requirement for cognitive processing at the information‐gathering phase of the task. The results of the study show that psychophysiological measurements of stress and activity can provide valuable information on stress and its association with cognitive performance at work.

Application of Speech on Stress Recognition with Neural Network in Nuclear Power Plant

“…Other psychological studies have shown that individuals with high math anxiety stress demonstrated reduced working memory capacity, which led to increased reaction times and errors in their tasks [6]. In a simulated study, the experiment was carried out in a training simulator that matches the actual control room of a nuclear power plant [7]. The result illustrated that informationseeking performance decreases and reaction time decelerates under stressful situations.…”

Stress Responses of Examiners during Ophthalmic Examination Practices in Healthy Young Students

“…The stress reaction of trainees is an acute issue in the training of medical-related disciplines [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and in various fields involving real-time interaction and decision making for human safety, such as driving a vehicle [8][9][10] or operating a nuclear power plant [11,12]. In certain ophthalmological examinations, the examiner is required to make real-time decisions based on the interactions between the patient and the examiner.…”