Mutual interaction effects between discomfort and cognitive task performance in clothing systems

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.

Keywords:

• ergonomics
• protective clothing
• discomfort
• thermal strain
• comfort perception
• human performance
• cognitive tests