Selective effects of minor illnesses on human performance

Abstract

The study reported here examined the effects of experimentally induced minor illnesses (colds and influenza) on the efficiency of human performance. Influenza impaired the ability to detect and respond quickly to stimuli appearing at irregular intervals, but had no effect on a task requiring hand-eye coordination. In contrast to this, colds impaired hand-eye coordination but had little effect on the detection tasks. These results are of great practical importance because many skills clearly involve both attentional and motor factors and are, therefore, likely to be impaired by minor illnesses. The findings are also of major theoretical interest because of the dissociation of psychological functions produced by the different types of illness.

Impact of Plasmodium falciparum malaria on performance and learning: review of the evidence

“…38,39 The mechanisms include a toxicity effect, leading to biochemical changes in the central nervous system; excitation of the immune system, leading to changes in behaviors related to appetite and reaction time; and physiological effects, such as discomfort and disturbed sleep, leading to reductions in activity levels or causing behavioral change. [40][41][42][43][44] Processes similar to these could be envisaged after malaria infection, although the current evidence is inconclusive (see section below on school-age children).…”

Selective Effects of Colds and Influenza on Human Performance Efficiency: A Critical Appraisal

“…For example, although respiratory syncytial virus infection leads to impairment in terms of speed of performing the five choice serial reaction time task, accuracy (in terms of false alarms:hits) remains unaffected [ 16], In the light of the paucity of data, one could argue the case for a trend, but a 'dissociation of functions by the different illnesses' [10] is not well supported by the data. It may be that such dissociation between infection with cold and influenza exists, but at this stage the evidence is inconclusive.…”

“…There is stronger evidence for the assertion that in fluenza, but not cold, infection impairs performance on attention tasks when the subject is uncertain when or where a target stimulus is going to appear [ 12], Of the five 2 Amalgamated group of both coronavirus and rhinovirus sufferers [10]. Separate data for the two virus types were not given.…”

“…Closer inspection reveals that the putative dissociation, i.e. be tween the performance effects of colds and influenza, is based upon one type (B) of influenza virus failing to show a performance impairment on either the peg-board [9] or the tracking task [10], the latter being based upon a sam ple of 3 subjects. Furthermore, this is compared with some, but not all, of the cold virus infections leading to impairments on these types of task.…”

“…From these studies, it was concluded that influenza and colds have selective effects on performance [7][8][9], Influenza infection was said to slow reactions to stimuli appearing at irregular intervals or in unknown locations, whereas colds impaired hand-eye co-ordination [7,9], In addition, it was argued that the dissociation of perfor mance deficits produced by cold versus influenza infec tion was of theoretical interest, and possible physiological and molecular mechanisms were proposed [10], At first sight, the CCU data provide the most convinc ing evidence for performance impairments associated with colds and influenza. Indeed, such findings gave the impetus for a study that was recently conducted investi gating the effects of naturally occurring colds on perfor mance efficiency [unpublished data].…”