It may be assumed that most life organisms have the possibility to handle presented information, up to some maximal amount.
This could be called their information handling capacity.
This capacity could be measured by letting subjects handle information (for example from light stimuli) and measure how much information they could handle under conditions where other distractions (e.g. emotions or tasks) where minimized.
If there are such distractions of any significance they would presumably
affect the organisms information handling capacity and would leave him with a reduced, or
spare information handling capacity.Thus this
spare information handling capacity would in fact become a measure for that distraction (e.g. the intensity of that emotion or the complexity of that task -which would be forms of mental load if physical load was minimized).The author conducted experiments to investigate if this method could be used in dangerous situations which were not accessible for measurement of functioning of the mind.
For this he developed a small unit that emitted light stimuli to which the subject had to respond by pressing one of two knobs.
The responses could be observed, electronically registered and printed out by him in a continuous flow at considerable distance so he called it a
ALDSR UNIT@ (for LONG DISTANCE STIMULUS RESPONSE).This method, among other comparable situations, was used by him with firemen on top of 100 feet ladders, divers working outside undersea habitats or during habitat free escape (without air).
RELEVANT LINKS:
VALOCON EXP 13 APPARATUS AND REGISTRATION
PERFOMANCE MEASURES FOR MENTAL
LOAD I I .
RESPONSES TO AURAL STIMULI.
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