Title
Mutual interaction effects between discomfort and cognitive task performance in clothing systems
Author
den Hartog, E.A.
Koerhuis, C.L.
Publication year
2016
Abstract
The focus of this study was to establish a relationship between physical discomfort and performance. Eleven healthy male subjects participated in this pilot study. The subjects performed a 2-h protocol without and with significant thermal and mechanical discomfort. Various cognitive tasks were executed repeatedly during the protocol to evaluate cognitive performance on memory, tracking, and vigilance tasks. Prior and after each task, subjective comfort scores were asked and objective task performance was measured. Mechanical and/or thermal discomfort only minimally influenced the overall scores for comfort. The only significant change in objective performance was a 2% increase in percentage missed stimuli during thermal discomfort. The type of task did influence the change in comfort scores, increasing the scores during the attention and memory task and decreasing during the vigilance and tracking task and fine motor tasks. Surprisingly, not discomfort, but the type of task mainly influenced the changes in comfort, discomfort became worse (increased) during easy, less challenging tasks.
Subject
Human & Operational Modelling
TPI - Training & Performance Innovations
ELSS - Earth, Life and Social Sciences
Defence Research
Clothing
Defence, Safety and Security
Cognitive tests
Comfort perception
Discomfort
Ergonomics
Human performance
Protective clothing
Thermal strain
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cbb599d7-1160-41d9-9f6f-087dc82aaef0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/00405000.2016.1179089
TNO identifier
573553
Source
The Journal of the Textile Institute, 1-10
Bibliographical note
Prepublication
Document type
article