Detection Response Task -- method to assess the cognitive distraction potential -- ISO 17488

Introducing The Method

"The Detection Response Task (DRT) is a method used to objectively obtain values for mental or cognitive workload of a task or task set (e.g. drive a vehicle while navigating through an infotainment system or speaking on the phone). The DRT is used as a part of the task set and performed at the same time as the other tasks.

To perform the DRT, persons must detect a stimulus (appearing randomly between 3 and 5 seconds) and press a response button as quickly and accurately as possible. The stimulus can be visual or tactile: a red LED peripheral to the test subject (remote DRT) or mounted to his/her head (head mounted DRT), a vibrating motor placed on the participant’s shoulder (tactile DRT), respectively.

The DRT values (miss rate and reaction time of hits [RT]) are interpreted as the DRT measurement for the tasks under evaluation. The longer the RT, the higher the assumed cognitive workload resulting from task set performance. Miss rates reflect the degree to which the participant did not or was not able to detect the stimulus and or press the button."

[Source: Arduino DRT (Michael Krause, Antonia Conti)]

Open Source Resources

This site would recommend to use open source devices. Some arguments why you should think about building your own device based on free available resources:

If you know how your devices work, you not operate black boxes; as other researchers might do.
You can better judge whether results are plausible.
For other researchers it is easier to replicate your setups.
You extend and develop your skills.
You can adapt your equipment to different requirements, enhance it, repair it or fix bugs.

A simple setup can be built based on an Arduino (Arduino DRT sources on github).
The project has three different flavors:

The plain variant just logs the reaction times to an SD card.
The Ethernet version can send additionally the results via network, e.g. to a driving simulator.
A mega variant for the Arduino Mega provides more options to connect hard- and software (e.g., multiple LEDs, realtime clock, DHCP, etc.).

With an USB OTG adapter it is possible to power the setups from a smart phone or tablet. An additional small Android application (DRT RC) even allows to remote control the setup via the USB connection.

Smartphones have internal vibration motors and displays to give visual stimuli. This led to the idea to implement the DRT protocol for smart phones and test it in some experiments. To not confuse it with DRT, this concept is called Mobile Detection Task (MDT).

Who operates this site?

Hi, my name is Michael Krause. I worked six years at the Technical University Munich and did some DRT experiments. For this purpose I built my own DRT devices. This website reflects my opinion.