Battery Of Objective Measures Research Articles

Combined Effects of Occupational Hazards: The Impact of Combined Stressors on Health and Work Performance

There exists a significant body of evidence regarding the effects of occupational hazards. These effects are often considered in isolation, yet a significant proportion of the workforce is exposed to several hazards at a time. The purpose of this study was to investigate the combined impact of workplace factors on mood, cognitive performance and physiology. Participants completed a battery of objective measures before and after work, as previous research (e.g. Broadbent et al. 1989) has shown the difference between before and after work measures to be a good indicator of workload demands during the day. The test battery was performed on the first and last days of the working week. Subjective information regarding chronic and acute (i.e. daily) exposure to hazards was also collected. Mean composite 'total negative factors' scores were created for exposure to chronic and acute stressors (e.g. noise, exposure to hazardous substances, job demand): median splits of these variables were then entered into a series of ANOVAs where mood, simple reaction time and physiology served as dependent measures. Findings indicate that chronic exposure to negative factors results in increased susceptibility to fatigue, over the course of the testing session, working day and working week.

Toward a Battery of Behavioral and Objective Measures to Achieve Optimal Cochlear Implant Stimulation Levels in Children

Children require audible and comfortable stimulation from their cochlear implants immediately after device activation. To accomplish this, a battery of objective measures may be needed that could include the electrically evoked stapedius reflex (ESR), compound action potential from the auditory nerve (ECAP), and/or auditory brain stem response (EABR). In the present study, the following specific research questions were asked: In children using cochlear implants, 1) Can the ECAP, EABR, and ESR be recorded at the time of cochlear implantation? 2) What is the feasibility of measuring the ECAP, EABR, and the ESR repeatedly without the use of sedation over the first year of implant use? 3) Do ECAP, EABR, and ESR thresholds or behavioral measures change over time? 4) What is the relation between ECAP, EABR, and ESR thresholds and behavioral measures of threshold and comfortably loud levels? In 68 children, ECAP, EABR, and ESR responses as well as behavioral measures of stimulation threshold and maximum stimulation were recorded at regular intervals over the first year of implant use. In each child, responses were recorded to electrical pulses provided by three different electrodes along the implanted array. Visual inspections of the stapedius reflex (V-ESR) evoked by activation of the same three electrodes at the time of surgery were performed in an additional 20 children. ECAP and EABR measures were obtained in more than 84% of electrodes tested and 89% of children tested both in the operating room at the time of implant surgery (OR) and after surgery in nonsedated children. ESRs were recorded by using immittance measures in more than 65% of electrodes tested and 67% of children tested by 3 mo of implant use, but this technique was less successful in the OR and during early stages of device use. V-ESRs and ECAP thresholds were higher in the OR than ESRs and ECAPs at postoperative recording times. EABR and ECAP thresholds did not significantly change over the first 6 and 12 mo of implant use, respectively, whereas ESR thresholds increased. Behavioral measures of threshold decreased over time, whereas maximum stimulation levels rose over time. Behavioral measures of threshold and loudness were highly correlated at all test times. ECAP, EABR, and behavioral measures were lower when evoked by an electrode at the apical end of the implanted array than by more basal electrodes. Behavioral thresholds could be predicted mainly by ECAP thresholds, whereas maximum stimulation levels could best be predicted by ESR thresholds; both were significantly affected by the age at implantation. A combination of nonbehavioral measures can aid in the determination of useful cochlear implant stimulation levels, particularly in young children and infants with limited auditory experience. These measures can be made in the operating room and can be repeated after surgery when needed. Correction factors to predict threshold stimulation levels should be based on ECAP thresholds or EABR thresholds if necessary. Correction factors should be made for at least one apical and mid-array electrode, should take into account the age of the child, and may have to be revised during the first year of implant use. Maximum stimulation levels may be best determined by using the ESR.

Effects of Sensory Information and Prior Experience on Direct Subjective Ratings of Presence

We report three experiments using a new form of direct subjective presence evaluation that was developed from the method of continuous assessment used to assess television picture quality. Observers were required to provide a continuous rating of their sense of presence using a handheld slider. The first experiment investigated the effects of manipulating stereoscopic and motion parallax cues within video sequences presented on a 20 in. stereoscopic CRT display. The results showed that the presentation of both stereoscopic and motion parallax cues was associated with higher presence ratings. One possible interpretation of Experiment 1 is that CRT displays that contain the spatial cues of stereoscopic disparity and motion parallax are more interesting or engaging. To test this, observers in Experiment 2 rated the same stimuli first for interest and then for presence. The results showed that variations in interest did not predict the presence ratings obtained in Experiment 1. However, the subsequent ratings of presence differed significantly from those obtained in Experiment 1, suggesting that prior experience with interest ratings affected subsequent judgments of presence. To test this, Experiment 3 investigated the effects of prior experience on presence ratings. Three groups of observers rated a training sequence for interest, presence, and 3-Dness before rating the same stimuli as used for Experiments 1 and 2 for presence. The results demonstrated that prior ratings sensitize observers to different features of a display resulting in different presence ratings. The implications of these results for presence evaluation are discussed, and a combination of more-refined subjective measures and a battery of objective measures is recommended.

Fechner's Method of Production: An Application to Aesthetics

Following Fechner's introduction of three methods for use in the study of aestheticsMethods of Choice, Production and Use-research in this field has relied almost exclusively upon variants of the Method of Choice. While a neglect of the Method of Use is perhaps understandable in the context of experimental psychology, a neglect of the Method of Production is not. This paper describes an application of the Method of Production to aesthetics, one of the few investigations of real aesthetic objects tied to real aesthetic activities. The objectives of the present work were two-fold. Firstly, to add to the scarce literature involving Fechner's Method of Production, and secondly, to focus the application upon testing existing theory, namely, hypotheses derived from Bedyne's Arousal-Motivation model. The task required semantic rating of two products-a hairdryer and an engineering vicefouowed by the design of each product. Semantic measures covered familiarity, novelty, complexity (mechanical and visual), interest and liking. A battery of objective measures were applied to the fi~shed design work, e.g., Number of sketches and ideas, Types of marks, Sketching time, Amount of shading and colour added. Thirty-six Industrial Design (Eng) srudents at Teesside Polytechnic carried out the task. Many of the results for the hairdryer were consistent with Berlyne's model; for example, it was judged more interesting (t = 6.35, p< .001), more sketches were produced of it (t = 3.45, p<.001), and a longer time was spent sketching it (t = 35.50, p< ,001). For the vice, results, however, were partially inconsistent with Berlyne's model; for example, despite its lower rated interest and liking, a larger proportion of actual sketching time was spent adding detail to the vice in the form of colour (t = 24.44, p< ,001) and writing (t = 2.42, p < 21). The most surprising outcome is the powerful influence exerted by the identity of the object. Effectively, subjects preferred the hairdryer, they found it more interesting and novel irrespective of previous exposure to its design. (Half of the subjects had previously designed each product). More design sketches were generated for it, more individual and different design ideas were conceived, and a longer time was spent sketching it. No familiarity effect was obtained, contrary to Whirfield and Slatter's (1979) hypothesis. Some support is provided for Bedyne's Arousal-Motivation model, though this is obscured by the powerful-object effect.

The diagnostic significance of overinclusive thinking in an unselected psychiatric population.

Cameron (1938, 1939) suggested that schizophrenic thought disorder is largely the result of overinclusive thinking, which he defined as the inability to preserve conceptual boundaries. Payne, Matussek and George (1959) developed a battery of objective measures of overinclusive thinking, which they found differentiated between an acute schizophrenic and a neurotic control group. Payne and Hewlett (1960) found that a battery of tests of overinclusive thinking intercorrelated as expected. They were able to obtain a factor score from their overinclusion test battery which differentiated a group of acute schizophrenic patients from control groups of depressives, neurotics and normal subjects. Payne and Friedlander (1962), on the basis of this factorial study, suggested a short battery of three measures of overinclusive thinking consisting of the number of ‘Non-A’ or unusual responses to the Object Classification Test (Payne, 1962), the average number of words used in explaining the Benjamin Proverbs given under special 'stress free’ instructions, and the average number of objects classified together in the ‘handing over’ section of the Goldstein-Scheerer Object Sorting Test. This standard test battery has been the operational definition of overinclusive thinking in a number of studies. Only one study of the reliability of this test battery appears to have been carried out. Hawks and Payne (1971) report the correlations obtained from a group of 54 psychiatric inpatients who were retested after a 4-day interval. The test-retest correlation coefficient (uncorrected) obtained from the Combined Transformed score (Payne and Friedlander, 1962) was 0 · 87. The reliabilities of the individual tests ranged from 0·77 to 0·86.