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Frontiers in Psychology 2023One-dimensional rating scales are widely used in research and in the clinic to assess individuals' perceptions of sensory stimuli. Although these scales provide...
INTRODUCTION
One-dimensional rating scales are widely used in research and in the clinic to assess individuals' perceptions of sensory stimuli. Although these scales provide essential knowledge of stimulus perception, their limitation to one dimension hinders our understanding of complex stimuli.
METHODS
To allow improved investigation of complex stimuli, a two-dimensional scale based on the one-dimensional Gracely Box Scale was developed and tested in healthy participants on a visual and an auditory task (rating changes in brightness and size of circles and rating changes in frequency and sound pressure of sounds, which was compared to ratings on one-dimensional scales). Before performing these tasks, participants were familiarized with the intensity descriptors of the two-dimensional scale by completing two tasks. First, participants sorted the descriptors based on their judgment of the intensity of the descriptors. Second, participants evaluated the intensity of the descriptors by pressing a button for the duration they considered matching the intensity of the descriptors or squeezing a hand grip dynamometer as strong as they considered matching the intensity of the descriptors.
RESULTS
Results from these tasks confirmed the order of the descriptors as displayed on the original rating scale. Results from the visual and auditory tasks showed that participants were able to rate changes in the physical attributes of visual or auditory stimuli on the two-dimensional scale as accurately as on one-dimensional scales.
DISCUSSION
These results support the use of a two-dimensional scale to simultaneously report multiple dimensions of complex stimuli.
PubMed: 36935976
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1127699 -
The Science of the Total Environment Jun 2023With the outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, HCWs are frequently required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) for nucleic acid sample collection in...
With the outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, HCWs are frequently required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) for nucleic acid sample collection in semi-open transition spaces. Wearing PPE causes significant psychological and physical stress in HCWs. In this study, operative temperature (T) and wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) were used to assess thermal conditions through field experiments, while multiple physiological parameters were measured in the subjects. The results indicated that the subjects showed statistically significant differences in thermal perception and physiological parameters with and without PPE. Using observed increases in heart rate (HR), auditory canal temperature (T), mean skin temperature (MST), and end-tidal CO pressure, subjects were shown to have an increased metabolic rate and heat storage while wearing PPE. Additionally, a decrease in oxygen concentration was also observed, and this decrease may be linked to fatigue and cognitive impairment. Moreover, HR, MST, and T showed a significant linear relationship, which increased with temperature and operative temperature, and the HR response was stronger with PPE than without PPE. The neutral, preferred, and acceptable temperatures were significantly lower with PPE than without PPE, and the deviations for neutral T/WBGT were 9.5/7.1 °C and preferred T/WBGT was 2.2/4.0 °C, respectively. Moreover, the upper limits of acceptable WBGT, 29.4 °C with PPE and 20.4 °C without PPE, differed significantly between the two phases. Furthermore, the recorded physiological parameter responses and thermal perception responses of the subjects while wearing PPE indicated that they were at risk of thermal stress. Overall, these results suggest that people who wear PPE should focus on their health and thermal stress. This study provides a reference for the development of strategies to counteract heat stress and improve thermal comfort.
Topics: Humans; COVID-19; Personal Protective Equipment; Skin Temperature; Stress, Physiological; Heat-Shock Response; Hot Temperature
PubMed: 36924973
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162779 -
International Journal of Environmental... Feb 2023Athletes use their own perception to monitor distance and regulate their pace during exercise, avoiding premature fatigue before the endpoint. On the other hand, they...
Athletes use their own perception to monitor distance and regulate their pace during exercise, avoiding premature fatigue before the endpoint. On the other hand, they may also listen to music while training and exercising. Given the potential role of music as a distractor, we verified if music influenced the athletes' ability to monitor the distance covered during a 20-km cycling time trial (TT20km). We hypothesized that music would elongate cyclists' perceived distance due to reduced attentional focus on exercise-derived signals, which would also change their ratings of perceived exertion (RPE). We also expected that the motivational role of music would also be beneficial in pacing and performance. After familiarization sessions, ten recreational cyclists performed an in-laboratory TT20km while either listening to music or not (control). They reported their RPE, associative thoughts to exercise (ATE), and motivation when they each perceived they had completed 2-km. Power output and heart rate (HR) were continuously recorded. Cyclists elongated their distance perception with music, increasing the distance covered for each perceived 2 km ( = 0.003). However, music reduced the error of conscious distance monitoring ( = 0.021), pushing the perceived distance towards the actual distance. Music increased the actual distance-RPE relationship ( = 0.004) and reduced ATE ( < 0.001). However, music affected neither performance assessed as mean power output ( = 0.564) and time ( = 0.524) nor psychophysiological responses such as HR ( = 0.066), RPE ( = 0.069), and motivation ( = 0.515). Cyclists elongated their distance perception during the TT20km and changed the actual distance-RPE relationship, which is likely due to a music-distractive effect. Although there was a reduced error of conscious distance monitoring, music affected neither pacing nor performance.
Topics: Humans; Music; Attention; Fatigue; Auditory Perception; Exercise; Physical Exertion; Bicycling; Heart Rate
PubMed: 36900900
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20053890 -
Archives of Razi Institute Aug 2022Video games have significant and diverse effects on stress and cognitive systems based on the game style. The effect of this media on the central nervous system is... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
Video games have significant and diverse effects on stress and cognitive systems based on the game style. The effect of this media on the central nervous system is significant because of its repetition. Nowadays, video games have become an important part of human life at different ages, and therefore, assessing their effects (good and bad) on stress factors, cognition, and behavior can be an important help in understanding the nature of these games and managing their impact on humans. Consequently, this study aimed to investigate the effect of a puzzle game on the player's stress and cognitive indicators in neuropsychological, biochemical, and electrophysiological approaches. A total of 44 participants were entered into the study and randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Our interventions were watching (control group) and playing (experimental group) the game. Salivary biomarkers (cortisol and alpha-amylase) were measured using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. Electrophysiological assessment of attention and stress was performed using electroencephalography. Neuropsychological assessments for the evaluation of mental health, mental fatigue, sustained attention, and reaction time were conducted using paced auditory serial addition test. All tests were administered before and after the interventions. The findings revealed that the salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase significantly reduced after playing the game. There were significantly higher levels of attention after playing the game. Mental health and sustained attention significantly increased after game playing. It can conclude that puzzle-style computer games can strengthen and empower the perceptual-cognitive system and suppress the stress system of players. Therefore, they can be used purposefully as a positive cognitive therapy approach.
Topics: Humans; alpha-Amylases; Cognition; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; Hydrocortisone
PubMed: 36883163
DOI: 10.22092/ARI.2021.356500.1855 -
European Archives of... Sep 2023Hearing screening can be used to detect hearing loss, but its value for identifying employees with work functioning difficulties is unclear. The objective of this study...
OBJECTIVE
Hearing screening can be used to detect hearing loss, but its value for identifying employees with work functioning difficulties is unclear. The objective of this study was to assess the association between the hearing status measured with an occupational hearing-in-noise screening test, Listening Effort (LE), and Need For Recovery (NFR) in employees of a manufacturing company, and to examine whether these associations depend on the perceived noise level at the workplace.
METHODS
Employees of coatings and paints manufacturing company were included. Their hearing status was assessed with an occupational hearing-in-noise screening test. An online survey was used to assess their LE, NFR, and the perceived noise level at the workplace. Responses from 143 employees were analyzed (mean age = 53 years) using hierarchical multiple regression analysis with the outcomes LE and NFR.
RESULTS
Regression analysis-with adjustments for gender, age, educational level, health status, pace/amount of work, job variety, and work pleasure-revealed that hearing status was significantly associated with LE, but the interaction between hearing status and the perceived noise level was not. Hearing status nor the interaction between hearing status and the perceived noise level was significantly associated with NFR.
CONCLUSION
The results confirm that poorer hearing is associated with higher LE, but not with higher NFR. These associations were unrelated to the perceived noise level at the workplace. Therefore, the value of occupational hearing screening appears to be early identification of hearing loss in employees, but not identification of work functioning difficulties.
Topics: Humans; Middle Aged; Listening Effort; Auditory Perception; Hearing Loss; Noise; Hearing; Deafness; Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced
PubMed: 36856807
DOI: 10.1007/s00405-023-07898-x -
Lin Chuang Er Bi Yan Hou Tou Jing Wai... Mar 2023To explore the value and influencing factors of behavioral audiometry in subjective hearing assessment of children. The results of behavioral audiometry(visual...
To explore the value and influencing factors of behavioral audiometry in subjective hearing assessment of children. The results of behavioral audiometry(visual reinforcement audiometry or play audiometry) of 1944 children(3888 ears) in the outpatient department from January 2012 to December 2015 were retrospectively analyzed. The subjective performance(" good ", "moderate", "poor", " unfinished ") was compared according to age and hearing level. SPSS 27.0 software was used for statistical analysis. The subjective performance of children was "good" in 2791 ears(71.8%), "moderate" in 411 ears(10.6%), "poor" in 309 ears(7.9%) and " unfinished " in 377 ears(9.7%). In visual reinforcement audiometry, the proportion of children who subjectively performed as "good" gradually increased with age, reaching the peak at 2 years old, and decreased with age after 2 years old. In play audiometry, the proportion of children who subjectively performed as "good" gradually increased with age, peaking at 4-5 years of age. The children who did not finish the test were mainly 1-3 years old. The reasons included uncooperation for 148 ears, crying for 95 ears, refusing to wear headphones for 57 ears, fatigue for 42 ears, lack of interest for 20 ears, not understanding for 14 ears, and distraction for 1 ear. Behavioral audiometry was helpful to assess children's subjective hearing, and children's subjective performance was good. In clinical work, more novel and attractive test materials and methods should be adopted or developed according to the physical and mental characteristics of young children.
Topics: Child; Humans; Child, Preschool; Infant; Retrospective Studies; Auditory Threshold; Audiometry; Hearing Tests; Hearing; Audiometry, Pure-Tone
PubMed: 36843513
DOI: 10.13201/j.issn.2096-7993.2023.03.003 -
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2022In many experiments that investigate auditory and speech processing in the brain using electroencephalography (EEG), the experimental paradigm is often lengthy and...
In many experiments that investigate auditory and speech processing in the brain using electroencephalography (EEG), the experimental paradigm is often lengthy and tedious. Typically, the experimenter errs on the side of including more data, more trials, and therefore conducting a longer task to ensure that the data are robust and effects are measurable. Recent studies used naturalistic stimuli to investigate the brain's response to individual or a combination of multiple speech features using system identification techniques, such as multivariate temporal receptive field (mTRF) analyses. The neural data collected from such experiments must be divided into a training set and a test set to fit and validate the mTRF weights. While a good strategy is clearly to collect as much data as is feasible, it is unclear how much data are needed to achieve stable results. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the specific stimulus used for mTRF fitting and the choice of feature representation affects how much data would be required for robust and generalizable results. Here, we used previously collected EEG data from our lab using sentence stimuli and movie stimuli as well as EEG data from an open-source dataset using audiobook stimuli to better understand how much data needs to be collected for naturalistic speech experiments measuring acoustic and phonetic tuning. We found that the EEG receptive field structure tested here stabilizes after collecting a training dataset of approximately 200 s of TIMIT sentences, around 600 s of movie trailers training set data, and approximately 460 s of audiobook training set data. Thus, we provide suggestions on the minimum amount of data that would be necessary for fitting mTRFs from naturalistic listening data. Our findings are motivated by highly practical concerns when working with children, patient populations, or others who may not tolerate long study sessions. These findings will aid future researchers who wish to study naturalistic speech processing in healthy and clinical populations while minimizing participant fatigue and retaining signal quality.
PubMed: 36741776
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.1001171 -
Medycyna Pracy Mar 2023Along with socio-economic pression increase in developed countries, the progressive shortening of night sleep has been observed. Sleep plays a vital role in human...
BACKGROUND
Along with socio-economic pression increase in developed countries, the progressive shortening of night sleep has been observed. Sleep plays a vital role in human organism regeneration, and its deprivation leads to a series of adverse psychosomatic effects, including intellectual performance limitation or reducing body immunity, which increases susceptibility to diseases. Chronic sleep deprivation, quite often affecting medical students, significantly contributes to hypersomnia and leads to chronic fatigue.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The results of 60 students were analysed; students were divided into 2 subgroups, depending on the average sleep duration during previous 2-3 nights: IA (2.3±0.8 h on average) and IB (4.9±0.5 h on average). The control group consisted of 50 students, whose night sleep duration in that period was 7.5±0.62 h. In all subjects under analysis visual and auditory evoked potentials were registered, which is a non-invasive method of cognitive performance tests.
RESULTS
The obtained results showed that people with average night sleep duration 2.3±0.8 h (subgroup IA) had worse rate and precision of stimulus response, and thereby significantly worse (p < 0.001) sensorimotor performance, then those from subgroup IB. The study of evoked potentials showed significant (from p < 0.04 to p < 0.001) elongation of all latency p-waves connected with the stimulus perception (N) and attention span (P, N). Moreover, significant elongation of visual latency wave P and auditory wave V was related to psychophysical fatigue occurring in sleep deprivation.
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis of this study results, obtained in medical students showed that sleep deprivation occurring during exam session is closely related to cognitive abilities, which in turn adversely affects the academic achievement. These results indicate that night sleep duration is a differentiating factor for cognitive abilities quality. Also, psychosomatic fatigue adversely affects cognitive processes. Med Pr. 2023;74(1):27-40.
Topics: Humans; Sleep Deprivation; Students, Medical; Sleep; Sleep Duration; Cognition
PubMed: 36689334
DOI: 10.13075/mp.5893.01305 -
Journal of Speech, Language, and... Feb 2023Listening-related fatigue is a potential negative consequence of challenges experienced during everyday listening and may disproportionately affect older adults....
PURPOSE
Listening-related fatigue is a potential negative consequence of challenges experienced during everyday listening and may disproportionately affect older adults. Contrary to expectation, we recently found that increased reports of listening-related fatigue were associated with better performance on a dichotic listening task. However, this link was found only in individuals who reported heightened sensitivity to a variety of physical, social, and emotional stimuli (i.e., increased "sensory-processing sensitivity" [SPS]). This study examined whether perceived effort may underlie the link between performance and fatigue.
METHOD
Two hundred six young adults, aged 18-30 years (Experiment 1), and 122 older adults, aged 60-80 years (Experiment 2), performed a dichotic listening task and were administered a series of questionnaires including the NASA Task Load Index of perceived effort, the Vanderbilt Fatigue Scale (measuring daily life listening-related fatigue), and the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (measuring SPS). Both experiments were completed online.
RESULTS
SPS predicted listening-related fatigue, but perceived effort during the listening task was not associated with SPS or listening-related fatigue in either age group. We were also unable to replicate the interaction between dichotic listening performance and SPS in either group. Exploratory analyses revealed contrasting effects of age; older adults found the dichotic listening task more effortful but indicated lower overall fatigue.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that SPS is a better predictor of listening-related fatigue than performance or effort ratings on a dichotic listening task. SPS may be an important factor in determining an individual's likelihood of experiencing listening-related fatigue irrespective of hearing or cognitive ability.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21893013.
Topics: Aged; Humans; Young Adult; Auditory Perception; Fatigue; Hearing; Hearing Tests; Speech Perception; Surveys and Questionnaires; Adolescent; Adult; Aged, 80 and over
PubMed: 36657070
DOI: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00374 -
Trends in Hearing 2023Listening effort (LE) describes the cognitive resources needed to process an auditory message. Our understanding of this notion remains in its infancy, hindering our... (Review)
Review
Listening effort (LE) describes the cognitive resources needed to process an auditory message. Our understanding of this notion remains in its infancy, hindering our ability to appreciate how it impacts individuals with hearing impairment effectively. Despite the myriad of proposed measurement tools, a validated method remains elusive. This is complicated by the seeming lack of association between tools demonstrated via correlational analyses. This review aims to systematically review the literature relating to the correlational analyses between different measures of LE. Five databases were used- PubMed, Cochrane, EMBASE, PsychINFO, and CINAHL. The quality of the evidence was assessed using the GRADE criteria and risk of bias with ROBINS-I/GRADE tools. Each statistically significant analysis was classified using an approved system for medical correlations. The final analyses included 48 papers, equating to 274 correlational analyses, of which 99 reached statistical significance (36.1%). Within these results, the most prevalent classifications were poor or fair. Moreover, when moderate or very strong correlations were observed, they tended to be dependent on experimental conditions. The quality of evidence was graded as very low. These results show that measures of LE are poorly correlated and supports the multi-dimensional concept of LE. The lack of association may be explained by considering where each measure operates along the effort perception pathway. Moreover, the fragility of significant correlations to specific conditions further diminishes the hope of finding an all-encompassing tool. Therefore, it may be prudent to focus on capturing the consequences of LE rather than the notion itself.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Child; Listening Effort; Hearing Loss; Speech Perception
PubMed: 36636020
DOI: 10.1177/23312165221137116