Off-Topic Chatter as an Unobtrusive Assessment of Workload

Prior work suggests that off-topic (OT) chatter during collaborative scheduling is negatively associated with workload. Because of the complexities in assessing real-time workload in a space environment, this finding has the potential to improve HCI assessment of spacecraft technologies through unobtrusive monitoring and analysis of astronauts’ conversations. The current paper aimed to reanalyze the original Campaign 6 (C6) data at the workload subscale level, replicate the overall OT chatter/workload correlation in HERA Campaign 7 (C7), and extend the analysis by identifying which dimensions of workload drive the relationship. C7 analyses replicated the negative correlation in one of the two scheduling sessions, but not the other. Exploratory subscale analysis revealed that frustration was the dimension most robustly correlated with OT chatter, with temporal demand and effort showing weaker associations. While the replication is only partially consistent with prior work, possibly due to limited sample sizes or temporal dynamics between missions, the converging results across C6 and part of C7 support OT chatter as a candidate index of workload. Monitoring off-topic conversation during collaborative tasks could provide an unobtrusive method for real-time workload assessment of astronaut crew.