Cognitive Study Based On Dressing In Thermal Environment

The changes of labor intensity and intensity in industrial society increase the thermal physiological reaction,and workers in some extremely hot environments are subject to physical discomfort and cognitive impairment due to high-temperature stimulation to varying degrees,thereby their working efficiencies are impaired,and even are exposed to occupational injuries and life threatsIn the current study,the climate chamber was used to test the cognitive behaviors and physiological indexes of the wearer,including attention,memory and decision-making in a certain thermal environment.The purpose was to evaluate the effects of thermal environment and clothing on wearer’s physiological indexes and cognitive behaviors,and was further to develop a relationship model between clothing,physiology and cognitive behavior.A Latin square design was adopted,23 participants were randomly assigned to three experimental groups:control group(CON,25±1℃,60%RH,wear general clothing),high-temperature group(HOT,35±1℃,60%RH,wear general clothing)and experimental group(HPC,35±1℃,60%RH,wear protective clothing).Before and after exercises,the cognitive behaviors and the relative physiological data were recorded,including average skin temperature,humidity,heart rate,clothing microclimate temperature and so on.The weight and subjective thermal comfort were measured before and after the experiment.The subjective thermal comfort assessment includes four aspects:fatigue feeling,thermal environment perception,skin humidity evaluation and thermal comfort evaluation.The results were as follows:(1)when the heart rate was close to the maximum in the three groups,subjects’ average weight in the high-temperature group was reduced by 1.1～1.6 kg and have notable sense of fatigue and discomfort.When subjects ran with protective clothing for 50 min,their skin temperatures will be similar to those in the fire-extinguishing environment.Finally,the maximum physiological strain balance was achieved.(2)Compared with those in pre-exercise,the error rate of cognitive behavior was increased,and memory behavior was significantly impaired,the reaction time was prolonged,while the changes of attention and decision-making were not remarkable in post-exercise.(3)In hot environment,although the attention is easy to be distracted,the error rate of decision-making and memory behavior increased.However,the changes in attention and memory behavior were not statistically significant,while the behavior of decision-making is related to the type of task.(4)Protective clothing can only have a limited impact on the cognitive behavior in thermal environment.