scholarly journals The Relationship between Different Types of Alarm Sounds and Children’s Perceived Risk Based on Their Physiological Responses

Author(s):  
Jiaxu Zhou ◽  
Xiaohu Jia ◽  
Guoqiang Xu ◽  
Junhan Jia ◽  
Rihan Hai ◽  
...  

Due to differences in cognitive ability and physiological development, the evacuation characteristics of children are different from those of adults. This study proposes a novel method of using wearable sensors to collect data (e.g., electrodermal activity, EDA; heart rate variability, HRV) on children’s physiological responses, and to continuously and quantitatively evaluate the effects of different types of alarm sounds during the evacuation of children. In order to determine the optimum alarm for children, an on-site experiment was conducted in a kindergarten to collect physiological data for responses to different types of alarm sounds during the evacuation of 42 children of different ages. The results showed that: (1) The alarm sounds led to changes in physiological indicators of children aged 3–6 years, and the effects of different types of alarm sounds on EDA and HRV activities were significantly different (p < 0.05). Skin conductance (SC), skin conductance tonic (SCT) and skin conductance level (SCL) can be used as the main indicators for analysing EDA of children in this experiment (p < 0.05), and the indicators of ultralow frequency (ULF) and very low frequency (VLF) for HRV were not affected by the type of alarm sounds (p > 0.05). (2) Unlike adults, kindergarten children were more susceptible to the warning siren. The combined voice and warning alarm had optimal effects in stimulating children to perceive risk. (3) For children aged 3–6 years, gender had a significant impact on children’s reception to evacuation sound signals (p < 0.05): Girls are more sensitive than boys in receiving evacuation sound signals, similar to findings of studies of risk perception of adult males and females. In addition, the higher the age, the greater the sensitivity to evacuation sound signals, which accords with results of previous studies on the evacuation dynamics of children.

1994 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 611-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Benjamins ◽  
Albert H. B. Schuurs ◽  
Johan Hoogstraten

The present study assesses the relationship between self-reported dental anxiety (Dental Anxiety Inventory, Dental Anxiety Scale, and Duration of Psychophysiological Fear Reactions), electrodermal activity (skin-conductance level and frequency of spontaneous responses), and Marlowe-Crowne defensiveness. All measurements were made twice. The first session was scheduled immediately before a semi-annual dental check-up (stress condition), and baseline measurements were made two months later without the prospect of a dental appointment. Subjects were male dental patients who regularly attended a university dental clinic and a clinic for Special Dental Care. The main findings were that the low anxious-high defensive-scoring (Marlowe-Crowne Denial subscale) university patients showed significantly higher skin-conductance levels and frequency of nonspecific fluctuations than the low anxious-low defensive-scoring subjects. Besides, the conductance values of the low anxious-high defensive-scoring subjects resembled those of the high anxious-low defensive-scoring patients of the clinic for Special Dental Care, the baseline frequency of nonspecific fluctuations excepted.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dindar S. Bari

Electrodermal activity (EDA) is a well-established psychophysiological measurement for research and clinical approaches. Males and females often display different physiological responses to stimuli, which can be detected by EDA recordings. Using a new method to measure skin conductance (SC), skin potential (SP) and skin susceptance (SS) simultaneously at the same electrode, these differences were investigated. SC, SP, and SS were recorded from 60 participants during relaxation and stress. It was found that both tonic and phasic EDA parameters indicated gender differences. In addition, females displayed greater tonic and phasic EDA parameters (except for skin potential responses (SPRs)) than males under both relaxation and conditions of stimulation (stress). However, these results were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). This suggests that it is perhaps important to consider gender or at least note type of gender in EDA researches, but this cannot be generalized to clinical approaches.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solène Le Bars ◽  
Alexandre Devaux ◽  
Tena Nevidal ◽  
Valerian Chambon ◽  
Elisabeth Pacherie

The sense of agency (SoA) experienced in joint action is an essential subjective dimension of human cooperativeness, but we still know little about the specific factors that contribute to its emergence or alteration. In the present study, dyads of participants were instructed to coordinate their key presses to move a cursor up to a specific target (i.e., to achieve a common goal). We applied random deviations on the cursor’s trajectory to manipulate the motor fluency of the joint action, while the agents’ motor roles were either balanced (i.e., equivalent) or unbalanced (i.e., one agent contributed more than the other), making the agents more or less pivotal to the joint action. Then, the final outcomes were shared equally, fairly (i.e., reflecting individual motor contributions) or arbitrarily in an all-or none fashion, between the co-agents. Self and joint SoA were measured through self-reports about feeling of control (FoC), and electrodermal activity was recorded during the whole motor task. We observed that self and joint FoC were reduced in the case of low motor fluency, pointing out the importance of sensorimotor cues for both I- and we-modes. Moreover, while self FoC was reduced in the low pivotality condition (i.e., low motor role), joint FoC was significantly enhanced when agents’ roles and rewards were symmetrical (i.e. equal). Skin conductance responses to rewards were impacted by the way outcomes were shared between partners (i.e., fairly, equally or arbitrarily) but not by the individual gains, which demonstrates the sensitivity of low-level physiological reactions to external signs of fairness. Skin conductance level was also reduced in the fair context, where rewards were shared according to individual motor contributions, relative to the all-or-none context, which could mirror the feeling of effective responsibility and control over actions’ outcomes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilena Bauer ◽  
Julia Hartkopf ◽  
Anna-Karin Wikström ◽  
Nora Schaal ◽  
Hubert Preissl ◽  
...  

Background: Prenatal maternal stress can have adverse effects on birth outcomes and fetal development. Relaxation techniques have been examined as one potential countermeasure. This study investigates different relaxation techniques and their effect on mood and physiological stress levels in pregnant women.Methods: 36 pregnant women (30 to 40 weeks of gestation) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: music, guided imagery or resting. Dependent measures included self-report questionnaires, subjective ratings of stress levels as well as physiological measures, i.e. cardiovascular and electrodermal activity.Results: All three forms of relaxation led to reduced maternal stress: decreased heart rate and decreased skin conductance levels. Based on heart rate, skin conductance level and stress ratings there were no significant differences between relaxation interventions. Subjective post-intervention stress ratings indicated that more relaxation occured after intervention in earlier gestation than in late gestation.Conclusion: Independent of relaxation technique, a 20-minute period of acute relaxation can reduce maternal stress. Notably, women earlier in pregnancy reported to be more relaxed after the intervention than women later in gestation. Hence, gestational age can influence perceived stress levels and should be considered when evaluating relaxation or stress management interventions during pregnancy.


1987 ◽  
Vol 150 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. White ◽  
J. Farley ◽  
P. Charles

Bilateral palmar skin conductance and heart rate were measured throughout a series of psychological tests and during both sitting and ambulant social interactions in 14 right-handed men with chronic schizophrenic disorder and 12 healthy volunteers matched for age and handedness. Miniature radio telemetry equipment was used to collect the physiological data. The schizophrenic group was effectively unresponsive to 70-dB auditory stimuli, while all but one of the control group responded and habituated to a nil response by the tenth tone in sequence. The schizophrenic group showed some evidence of increased skin conductance activity at rest, and in socially demanding conditions skin conductance level and variability were increased in the right hand. The present group of electrodermal ‘non-responders' was not in general autonomically underactive. Asymmetry of skin conductance activity during social interaction may be a characteristic of chronic schizophrenic disorder.


Author(s):  
Yedukondala Rao Veeranki ◽  
Nagarajan Ganapathy ◽  
Ramakrishnan Swaminathan

In this work, an attempt has been made to classify various emotional states in Electrodermal Activity (EDA) signals using modified Hjorth features and non-parametric classifiers. For this, the EDA signals are collected from a publicly available online database. The EDA is decomposed into SCL (Skin Conductance Level) and SCR (Skin Conductance Response). Five features, namely activity, mobility, complexity, chaos, and hazard, collectively known as modified Hjorth features, are extracted from SCR and SCL. Four non-parametric classifiers, namely, random forest, k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, and rotation forest, are used for the classification. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach can classify the emotional states in EDA. Most of the features exhibit statistical significance in discriminating emotional states. It is found that the combination of modified Hjorth features and rotation forest is most accurate in classifying the emotional states. Thus, the result demonstrates that this method can recognize valence and arousal dimensions under various clinical conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (13) ◽  
pp. 4514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzana Visnovcova ◽  
Lucia Bona Olexova ◽  
Nikola Sekaninova ◽  
Igor Ondrejka ◽  
Igor Hrtanek ◽  
...  

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder with increasing prevalence in childhood and adolescence. Sympathetic dysregulation is supposed to be the underlying mechanism of increased cardiovascular risk in AN. Thus, we assess the electrodermal activity (EDA) as a non-invasive index of sympathetic cholinergic activity using linear and nonlinear analysis in adolescent AN with the aim of detecting potential biomarkers for AN-linked cardiovascular risk. We examined 25 adolescent girls with AN and 25 age-matched controls. EDA was continuously recorded during a 5-min resting phase. Evaluated parameters were: time-domain (skin conductance level, non-specific skin conductance responses), frequency-domain (EDA in very low, low, sympathetic, high and very high frequency bands) and nonlinear (approximate, sample, symbolic information entropies, detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA)) parameters of EDA and peripheral skin temperature. Our findings revealed lower EDA values indicating a decrease in the sympathetic nervous activity in female adolescents with the acute phase of AN. Further, we found higher nonlinear index DFA in AN vs. controls. We assumed that nonlinear index DFA could provide novel and independent information on the complex sympathetic regulatory network. We conclude that the parameters of complex EDA analysis could be used as sensitive biomarkers for the assessment of sympathetic cholinergic dysregulation as a risk factor for AN-linked cardiovascular morbidity.


1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. K. Toone ◽  
E. Cooke ◽  
M. H. Lader

SynopsisIt has recently been suggested that the bilateral asymmetry of electrodermal activity (EDA) reported in schizophrenia may be related to unilateral temporal lobe dysfunction. To test this hypothesis, 3 aspects of EDA – skin conductance level (SCL), number of spontaneous fluctuations (SF), and skin conductance response (SCR) – were measured bilaterally in 10 patients who had undergone unilateral temporal lobectomy. No differences could be detected between the operated and non-operated sides within the patient group, nor between the patient and control groups. The implications of these findings are discussed.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rachel L. Tomko

Research examining whether negative affect leads to drinking has produced mixed results (Greeley and Oei, 1999; Sher and Grekin, 2007). The current project enlisted participants (n=43) oversampled for affective instability, arguably making them at higher risk for negative affect-driven alcohol consumption. The goals of this study were to 1) validate an ambulatory device for measuring electrodermal activity (EDA) and to 2) examine the relations between emotion, EDA, and alcohol use in real-time. Multiple self-reports of emotion, alcohol use, and behavior were obtained from participants each day over the course of one week using electronic diaries. EDA was assessed continuously during waking hours. The results suggested that ambulatory measurement of EDA is feasible, and agreement between ambulatory measures and traditional laboratory measures was moderate to high for number of skin conductance responses per minute. Skin conductance level was less consistent across measures. With regard to ambulatory findings, high negative affect and high arousal states during the day were generally related to decreased likelihood of same-day drinking and decreased estimated blood alcohol concentration, while positive affect was related to increased likelihood of drinking. Hostility and number of skin conductance responses interacted, such that low hostility and low arousal was related to greater amounts of alcohol consumed. In sum, negative affect and arousal were related to alcohol use in real-time, but effects were small and both were generally protective against alcohol consumption at the day-level. This study helps to clarify the role of arousal in affect-related drinking, while also adding to accumulating evidence that suggests negative affect-related drinking may not be an immediate coping response. Positive-affect drinking may be most relevant in early stages of alcohol use, even in an emotionally dysregulated sample.


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