Measuring Mental Effort in Real Time Using Pupillometry

Mental effort, a critical factor influencing task performance, is often difficult to measure accurately and efficiently. Pupil diameter has emerged as a reliable, real-time indicator of mental effort. This study introduces RIPA2, an enhanced pupillometric index for real-time mental effort assessment. Building on the original RIPA method, RIPA2 incorporates refined Savitzky–Golay filter parameters to better isolate pupil diameter fluctuations within biologically relevant frequency bands linked to cognitive load. We validated RIPA2 across two distinct tasks: a structured N-back memory task and a naturalistic information search task involving fact-checking and decision-making scenarios. Our findings show that RIPA2 reliably tracks variations in mental effort, demonstrating improved sensitivity and consistency over the original RIPA and strong alignment with the established offline measures of pupil-based cognitive load indices, such as LHIPA. Notably, RIPA2 captured increased mental effort at higher N-back levels and successfully distinguished greater effort during decision-making tasks compared to fact-checking tasks, highlighting its applicability to real-world cognitive demands. These findings suggest that RIPA2 provides a robust, continuous, and low-latency method for assessing mental effort. It holds strong potential for broader use in educational settings, medical environments, workplaces, and adaptive user interfaces, facilitating objective monitoring of mental effort beyond laboratory conditions.