Abstract
Thermal stress has been shown to increase the chances of unsafe behavior during industrial and driving performances due to reductions in mental and attentional resources. Nonetheless, establishing appropriate safety standards regarding environmental temperature has been a major problem, as modulations are also be affected by the task type, complexity, workload, duration, and previous experience with the task. To bypass this attentional and thermoregulatory problem, we focused on the body rather than environmental temperature. Specifically, we measured tympanic, forehead, finger and environmental temperatures accompanied by a battery of attentional tasks. We considered a 10 min baseline period wherein subjects were instructed to sit and relax, followed by three attentional tasks: a continuous performance task (CPT), a flanker task (FT) and a counting task (CT). Using multiple linear regression models, we evaluated which variable(s) were the best predictors of performance. The results showed a decrement in finger temperature due to instruction and task engagement that was absent when the subject was instructed to relax. No changes were observed in tympanic or forehead temperatures, while the environmental temperature remained almost constant for each subject. Specifically, the magnitude of the change in finger temperature was the best predictor of performance in all three attentional tasks. The results presented here suggest that finger temperature can be used as a predictor of alertness, as it predicted performance in attentional tasks better than environmental temperature. These findings strongly support that peripheral temperature can be used as a tool to prevent unsafe behaviors and accidents.
Highlights
Environmental temperature has an important impact on behavior
Once we confirmed that a cumulative reduction in fingertip temperature was taking place and that ∆FingerT◦ was mostly positive during baseline rather than negative during the remaining tasks, we examined whether we could predict performance for all three attentional tasks based on temperature variables
We selected three attentional tasks to predict performance using peripheral thermoregulatory variables: a continuous performance task (CPT) to measure the ability of maintaining attention over time (Huang-Pollock et al, 2012), a flanker task (FT) to measure the ability to ignore distractors (Proksch and Bavelier, 2002; Green and Bavelier, 2003), and a counting task (CT) to measure the availability of attentional resources (Green and Bavelier, 2003)
Summary
Environmental temperature has an important impact on behavior. For instance, thermal stress increases the chances of unsafe behavior during industrial work (Ramsey et al, 1983), impairing cognitive functions (Mazloumi et al, 2014), as well as diminishing driving performance (Hancock, 1986). Finger Temperature as an Arousal Marker performance involve the task type, complexity, workload, duration and previous experience with the task (Hancock, 1986; Pilcher et al, 2002; Hancock and Vasmatzidis, 2003; Gaoua et al, 2011) Even more importantly, these difficulties reduce the chances of suggesting an optimal environmental temperature during work instead of advising harmless ranges. Electroencephalogram (EEG) attentional event-related potentials (ERP) during a decision making task modulates within the thermoneutral zone (Vergara, 2015) These behavioral modulations putatively rooted on attentional phenomena have, neural correlates supporting thermal stress as an attentional phenomenon. We still lack understanding of a precise physiological mechanism explaining why environmental temperature can modulate behavior, and to a lesser extent, within a range that should be stressless
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