Time estimation as a measure of mental workload during the training of laparoscopic skills

How sensitive are distortions in students' time perception to changes in demand across laparoscopic training tasks? Volunteers used an endoscopy training simulator to perform two common training tasks. The simpler of the two tasks involved using graspers to move beads from a dish to a small bucket. The more difficult task involved threading beads onto small pegs. In one experiment, 13 participants estimated the duration of each training trial immediately upon its completion. They also completed the NASA-TLX. In another experiment, 15 participants verbally indicated when they thought each successive 31-second interval had elapsed while performing the training trials. Results indicated that errors in temporal judgments were sensitive to differences in task demand using the interval production method but not the retrospective estimation technique. One implication is that interval production shows promise as a secondary task workload measure for laparoscopic tasks, although procedural refinements are needed to maximize the measure's sensitivity.