A Spatial Secondary Task for Measuring Laparoscopic Mental Workload

Abstract

The present study examined whether a spatial secondary task could distinguish among different levels of laparoscopic skill. Novices and surgeons with different levels of laparoscopic experience were asked to perform a peg transfer task on a laparoscopic simulator along with the secondary task. The results showed that novices performed more poorly than the surgeons on both the primary peg task and the secondary task. This pattern of results suggests that the primary task was more difficult for the novices leaving fewer attentional resources for the secondary task. Moreover, the results show that the spatial secondary task used in this study is sensitive to differences in mental resources required by individuals with different levels of laparoscopic surgical skill.