Examining methods to induce cognitive fatigue

Cognitive fatigue is important to user task productivity and worker safety in critical occupations because it may cause exhaustion and difficulty executing mental tasks leading to increased errors and job related injuries. Activities that require sustained focused attention over time (i.e. vigilance) increase stress and induce cognitive fatigue. In careers where safety is critical, such as aviation, homeland security, and medicine, these errors can lead to serious injury or even death. Therefore, studying this phenomenon is crucial for findings ways to ameliorate these deleterious effects. In order to study cognitive fatigue effects in a laboratory setting researchers need to find effective tasks to induce fatigue. Studies that fail to do so may suffer ceiling effects as participants may not arrive to the study fatigued. Three methods shown to be stressful in the literature, a 15-minute break, a 15-minute vigilance task, and a 30-minute vigilance task were used to induce laboratory fatigue. These three methods were compared to determine their effectiveness of inducing fatigue. Physiological fatigue was determined using ECG, subjective fatigue was determined using self-report stress, task engagement, and anxiety, and cognitive fatigue was determined using performance on a cognitive test designed to measure executive functioning. It was hypothesized that a 30-minute vigilance task would be most effective at inducing fatigue, as errors during vigilance tasks tend to increase over time on watch. Overall self-reported stress and fatigue was rated high in both vigilance tasks, but only the 30-minute task induced cognitive fatigue (decreased performance pre to post on the cognitive task). This finding is unique in the literature, as previous research has tested fatigue effects using subjective measures and not cognitive ones. Researchers who are interested in studying the restoration of cognitive fatigue effects are recommended to use tasks that require sustained focused attention for at least 30-minutes. It is also recommended that future research investigate motivational differences which may have lead to these findings

The Prosocial and Aggressive Driving Inventory (PADI): A Self-Report Measure of Safe and Unsafe Driving Behaviors

Surveys of 1217 undergraduate students supported the reliability (inter-item and test-retest) and validity of the Prosocial and Aggressive Driving Inventory (PADI). Principal component analyses on the PADI items yielded two scales: Prosocial Driving (17 items) and Aggressive Driving (12 items). Prosocial Driving was associated with fewer reported traffic accidents and violations, with participants who were older and female, and with lower Boredom Susceptibility and Hostility scores, and higher scores on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness, and Neuroticism. Aggressive Driving was associated with more frequent traffic violations, with female participants, and with higher scores on Competitiveness, Sensation Seeking, Hostility, and Extraversion, and lower scores on Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness. The theoretical and practical implications of the PADI’s dual focus on safe and unsafe driving are discussed

A Literature Review Of Major Perceptual, Cognitive, And/Or Physical Test Batteries For Older Drivers

The storage requirements for rendering with arbitrary tabular BRDFs can be quite large. This limits the number of BRDFs that can be in used in a scene to only a few. Furthermore, material parameters can be too complex to store and render per-pixel. © 2012 Authors

Using Practical Ergonomic Evaluations In The Restaurant Industry To Enhance Safety And Comfort: A Case Study

The advent and adoption of internet-based social networking has significantly altered our daily lives. The educational community has taken notice of the positive aspects of social networking such as creation of blogs and to support groups of system designers going through the same challenges and difficulties. This paper introduces a social networking framework for collaborative education, design and modeling of the next generation of smarter products and services. Human behaviour modeling in social networking application aims to ensure that human considerations for learners and designers have a prominent place in the integrated design and development of sustainable, smarter products throughout the total system lifecycle. Social networks blend self-directed learning and prescribed, existing information. The self-directed element creates interest within a learner and the ability to access existing information facilitates its transfer, and eventual retention of knowledge acquired. © 2012 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved

Space Adaptation Syndrome And Perceptual Training

A vexing problem within the medical life sciences is the “space adaptation syndrome” reported to afflict about one-half of all shuttle astronauts and mission specialists (Homick, Reschke, and Vanderploeg, 1984; Ishii, 1993; Nguyen, 1996; Reschke et al., 1998; Thornton, Pool, Moore, and Vanderploeg, 1987). The symptoms resemble those found with other forms of motion sickness (Money, Watt, and Oman, 1984), particularly those that are reported in visual rearrangement studies (Kottenhoff, 1957; Welch, 1978, 2000a), and in ground-based flight simulators (Kennedy, Lilienthal, Dutton, Ricard, and Frank, 1984). Cue conflict or neural mismatch (Reason, 1970) theory suggests that the constellation of symptoms is triggered by decorrelation between sensory stimuli (Kennedy, Berbaum,. and Frank, 1984; Oman, 1991; Parker, Reschke, Arrott, Homick, and Lichtenberg, 1985). In other words, the disparity between and within vision, vestibular, and somatic messages is the cause (Benson, 1978; Guedry, 1965). Thus, as one initially moves about in the weightless environment, the sensory channels provide incompatible information about spatial orientation and bodily movement, and this sensory conflict leads to nausea and motion sickness (Ishii, 1993). Preadapting astronauts to the visual/vestibular conflicts before embarkation to immunize them against space adaptation syndrome is the subject of this proposal. An old theory (von Holst, 1968) called reafference may have relevance for new findings (Welch, 2000a, 2000b)

Driving Under The Influence Of Distraction: Examining Dissociations Between Risk Perception And Engagement In Distracted Driving

Driving while distracted is a critical and unwavering problem in the United States leading to numerous injuries and fatalities each year. While increasing legislation and developing technological interventions strive to ensure we only focus on driving, individuals still drive distracted. We surveyed college-aged adults to examine the factors that influence both their risk perception of driving while distracted and how often they engage in distracting activities and situations while driving. We found a disassociation between individuals’ perception of driving distraction risk and their engagement with the distraction. Exposure, perceived knowledge of risks, fairness beliefs, and ratings of perceived visual and cognitive demands was associated with risk perception. Conversely, risk-seeking traits, how voluntary the task was perceived, and previous exposure to a distraction influenced engagement. Overall, we recommend additional research focusing on factors that predict engagement in driver distraction rather than perceived risk alone

Examining The Relationship Between Action Video Game Experience And Performance In A Distracted Driving Task

We conducted two experiments to assess the hypothesis that experienced action video game players will exhibit superior performance in a distracted driving task. In the first experiment, experienced gamers and controls drove in a driving simulator, with and without distraction. Experienced AVG players exhibited fewer lane deviations during driving as compared to non-gamers; however, video game experience was not associated with fewer lane deviations while distracted. These results showed evidence for the video game experience effect however, no evidence of improved cognitive ability was found. In the second experiment, we informed participants of the hypothesis to replicate the methods of studies that do not mask the purpose of the research. We found video game experience again was associated with fewer driving errors, but was still not associated with better driving performance while distracted; however, gamers recalled more details of the distracting conversation and reported lower workload while driving than non-gamers. We use these results to argue for caution in interpreting research with experienced gamers and increased replication with attention paid to recruitment methodology within this research domain. Finally, our results indicate that understanding the nature of AVG experience on task performance requires careful attention to motivational factors

Gender Differences in Multiple Task Performance among the Young and Old

Gender differences were investigated in multiple task performance among younger and older adults to determine whether there were differences in performance on dual-tasks which were considered ipsilateral or contralateral. Participants tapped with their right and left hands singularly, and performed a spatial rotation task and vocalization task in the dual-task conditions. Congruent with previous research, the findings indicate performance decrements for older adults in individual and dual task conditions when compared to younger adults. However, when gender is also considered, men appear to demonstrate the greatest changes in performance. The results provide data supporting the assertion that the difficulty older adults experience in dual-task conditions is a function of natural decreases in functional cerebral distance. Furthermore, the data provide preliminary indication regarding the potential for reallocation training as an intervention to minimize dual-task interference effects