No abstract

Ergonomic assessment of a workplace requires the evaluation of physical as well as cognitive aspects of a particular working situation. In particular the latter is hardly possible without interfering in the natural setting. Mobile acquisition of neurophysiological measures (such as parameters of the EEG) may close this gap. At a simulated workplace we tracked older and younger participants with mobile EEG during a 4–5 h work shift. They had to perform either a monotonous cognitive task, a self-paced cognitive task or a self-paced physical task in a predefined order. Self assessment, behavioral performance and spectral measures of the EEG (before most alpha power) indicated that younger participants suffered from monotony. Older adults, on the other hand, were overall impaired by inefficient information processing. This was visible in EEG variations time-locked to eye blinks (blink-related synchronizations), a new measure to investigate cognitive processing in real life environments. Thus, we were able to distinguish between active and passive task-related aspects of mental fatigue without impinging on the natural working situation.

There is increasing evidence that spontaneous eye blinks are related to mental states and can predict performance in certain tasks because of their relation to dopaminergic activity. Moreover, it has been shown that eye blinks while performing visual tasks are preferably executed not before all available information and even the manual response has been processed and given. Thus, blinks provide a natural endpoint of visual information processing. In the present study, we investigate to what degree such functional assignment of eye blinks also applies when only auditory stimuli are processed. For that, we present blink analyses on data of an auditory stock price monitoring task to examine the timing and frequency of blinks relative to the temporal dynamics of the task and different kinds of available cues. Our results show that blinks are meaningfully rather than randomly paced, although no visual information has to be processed. Blinks are significantly accelerated if a no-go trial is indicated which made all the subsequent information irrelevant. Although the stimuli were exclusively auditory, blinks were mostly inhibited during stimulus presentation. Taken together, blinks depend on the information being presented and mark a distinct point in time at which this information is conclusively processed. These findings deliver further support for the usefulness of eyeblink analyses, independently of the modality of the information being processed.

No abstract

The present study aimed to identify psychological barriers, which potentially prevent people from implementing collaborative car use in their every-day mobility behaviour. We suggested a model consisting of four psychological barriers: Autonomy Loss, Privacy Invasion, Interpersonal Distrust, and Data Misuse. Perceived Financial Benefit was included as a main incentive of collaborative car use. Using two samples, a community (N = 176) and a student sample (N = 265), three forms of peer-to-peer collaborative car use were examined: lending your own car to another private person (Lending To), renting a car from another private person (Renting From) and sharing rides with others (Ridesharing). For all three forms, a standardised questionnaire was developed which included the psychological barriers, self-reported collaborative car use intention and behaviour, and scenario evaluations. The results showed that specific barriers predicted specific forms of collaborative car use: Autonomy Loss was connected negatively with Ridesharing and Privacy Invasion predicted Lending To negatively. Data misuse was connected negatively with Renting From, when the renting was arranged via internet. Interpersonal Distrust showed no predictive value of collaborative car use. Perceived Financial Benefit was a consistent incentive for all forms of collaborative car use. Overall, the results confirm the relevance of psychological barriers to collaborative car use. Practical implications to overcome the psychological barriers are discussed.