title: Absence of habituation to repeated exposures to a rotating optokinetic drum with brief intersession intervals.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether participants would habituate to repeated exposures to a rotating drum with brief intersession intervals. Participants were 41 college students, divided into a High Susceptibility group and a Low Susceptibility group based on their subjective symptoms of motion sickness during the first exposure to the rotating drum. The study consisted of three 16-min. exposures to a rotating drum with intersession intervals of 30 min. Contrary to expectation, for the High Susceptibility group, the symptom score mean of the first session was significantly less than that of the second and third sessions; and the drum viewing time of the first session was longer than that of the second and third sessions. In the Low Susceptibility group, the symptom score and drum viewing time were not significantly different among the three sessions. In conclusion, participants did not habituate to three repeated exposures to a rotating drum with intersession intervals of 30 min. Instead, a sensitization response occurred for the participants high in susceptibility.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, State College 16802, USA. lxz121@psu.edu
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Stern
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015984:Causality; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009041:Motion Sickness / Q000175:diagnosis; D012399:Rotation; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013997:Time Factors