Citation

Young ME, McCoy AW, Hutson JP, Schlabach M, Eckels S. Appl. Ergon. 2017; 59: 209-214.

Affiliation

Kansas State University, Institute for Environmental Research, 64 Seaton Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.apergo.2016.08.035

PMID

27890130

Abstract

High temperatures have been documented to affect behavior in a variety of ways depending on the nature of the task. We extended this prior research by examining the effects of dynamically changing temperature on various aspects of performance in a video game task. In the span of approximately an hour, temperature was gradually increased, stayed constant for a period of time, and gradually decreased to baseline. The gaming task was a variation on one used to assess impulsivity in participants thus allowing the possibility of assessing the effects of temperature on impulsive choice. Rather than heat increasing impulsivity and thus decreasing wait times, participants showed increases in wait times as temperature increased which either suggests that participants were becoming more self-controlled under heat or that the documented negative impact of heat on motor functioning was dominating their performance. Importantly, the participant's sensitivity to the changing task requirements was not affected by changes in temperature.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en