title: Vicarious perception of postural discomfort and exertion.
abstract: Perceived exertion and discomfort have been used extensively in ergonomics practice. Job incumbents typically rate their exertion on scales such as Borg's rated perceived effort (RPE) and their discomfort on scales such as Corlett and Bishop's body part discomfort scales (BPD). This study asks whether exertion and discomfort can be perceived by an external observer, i.e. is vicarious perception possible? Four participants (targets) performed 20 postural holding tasks selected from Ovako Working Posture Analysing System postures and gave RPE and BPD scores for each posture. Video clips of each target in each posture were shown to four expert ergonomists and 23 novices, who also gave RPE and BPD scores. Correlations between targets and observers scores were high, with significance exceeding p = 0.01. Observers were generally conservative, rating easy postures too high and difficult postures too low. All observers rated female targets higher than male targets. Female observers rated all targets higher then male observers. Vicarious perception of discomfort and exertion was possible, but there was not a one-to-one correspondence to ratings given by those experiencing the posture.
authors.affiliation: University at Buffalo SUNY, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Buffalo, NY 14221, USA. Drury@buffalo.edu
authors.forename: Colin G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Drury
authors.forename: Moises
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Atiles
authors.forename: Mohan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chaitanya
authors.forename: Jui-Feng
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Clara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Marin
authors.forename: Mahiyar
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nasarwanji
authors.forename: Doug
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Paluszak
authors.forename: Casey
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sunm
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006804:Ergonomics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009518:New York; D015588:Observer Variation; D010146:Pain / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011187:Posture / Q000502:physiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014743:Videotape Recording