An Integrative Approach to Understanding and Predicting the Consequences of Fatigue on Cognitive Performance

The deleterious consequences of fatigue have motivated decades of research to understand the impact of inadequate sleep on cognitive performance. A key objective is to use insights from that research to develop predictive models that can serve as valid tools for managing work-rest schedules and making Go, No-Go mission decisions. Ultimately, this is about maximizing human performance and minimizing risk. In this paper, we describe a methodology that is moving us in the direction of achieving this goal, involving the integration of mathematical and computational process modeling approaches to understand how fatigue affects human cognitive processes. Mathematical models that capture the dynamics of the human arousal system are integrated with a cognitive architecture that instantiates a unified theory of the mechanisms of human cognition. The integration of these approaches leads to an enhanced ability to quantify the impact of fatigue on performance in particular tasks. We illustrate this by making principled, a priori predictions regarding how human performance in instrument flight with a Predator UAV synthetic task environment may change across 4 days without sleep.