Effect of the intermittent aroma stimuli on work performance: analysis using the drop point of time-series intellectual concentration

Abstract

With the rapid development of information society, the importance of knowledge work is increasing. Such knowledge work performance has been evaluated in various ways. The authors have developed and used CTR (Concentration Time Ratio), which is a performance evaluation index based on the ratio of time spent concentrating on a cognitive task for a total task conducted time. Although work concentration changes from moment to moment due to fatigue accumulation, distraction, and other factors, CTR ignored the time-series changes in performance while conducting the task.In this study, a new analysis method was applied to evaluate the effect of intermittent aroma stimuli on work performance, which was evaluated previously by CTR [1]. Totally 88 answering time data of the comparison task [2] that 22 participants performed 2 sets each in 2 conditions, with-aroma and without-aroma were included. Comparison task is a cognitive task developed to evaluate the workers’ intellectual concentration during conducting the task, which requires numerical and language processing, comparison and judgement [2]. Time series data of concentration were generated using the method used in our previous study [3]. In the with-aroma condition, aroma stimuli were presented for 10 seconds every 5 minutes. Therefore, the time window was decided to be relatively shorter to capture short-term temporal variation in concentration on task. We focused on the drop points of concentration. The drop points represent the timing at which the participants restarted concentrating and solving the cognitive task after slowing down due to fatigue accumulation or other factors while conducting the task. In other words, it is expected that there are more drop points when they were unable to maintain their concentration during the task time.When comparing sets conducted at the same time in two aroma conditions, in the group in which the average concentration value improved in the with-aroma condition (n=26), the average number of drop points was higher in the without-aroma condition. On the other hand, in the group in which the average concentration value decreased in the with-aroma condition (n=18), the average number of drop points was higher in with-aroma condition. It was suggested that for the participants whose concentration were improved by the intermittent aroma-stimuli, the occurrence of drop points was suppressed in with-aroma condition.[1] Kimi Ueda, et al.: An Objective and Quantitative Evaluation of Intermittent Aroma Stimuli on Intellectual Concentration. AHFE 2020 International Conference, pp.245-251, 2020.[2] Kimi Ueda, et al.: Development of a new cognitive task to measure intellectual concentration affected by room environment, ICHES2016 Nagoya, 2016.[3] Kimi Ueda, et al.: An Analysis of the Effect of Integrated Thermal Control on Cognitive Task Performance Using Time-Series Changes in Intellectual Concentration. AHFE 2022 International Conference. vol 56. pp. 205–210.