MEASURING FATIGUE

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 74, 29 March 1919, Page 10

MEASURING FATIGUE

MECHANICAL DEVICE OF A PSYCHOLOGIST.

Some remarkable experiments illustrating the mental effects of sleeplessness Were described recently at tho Education Conference, University College, London, by Miss May Smith, lecturer in Psychology at Oxford University. Tho problem of fatigue, she said, had never been adequately stated. There wero people who felt tired and were not tired, and other people whoso first experience of fatigue was complete breakdown. Miss Smith desoribed a mechanical dovice used for fatiguo tests, a machine through which passed a tape marked with red circles. The object was to touch the centre of eaoh ring with a pen as tho tape moved.

The lecturer first proved her own average of mistakes at eaoh test to be 70.90. She then subjected 'horself to three somewhat drastio vigils. 'Tho first night she slept one and a-half hours, the second three and a-half hours, and the third five and a-half. To her astonishment she found that on the day following the first night her number of mistakes was'at the normal; tho second day it was slightly abovo it; tho third day it wa3 very much higher than tho normal. Sh© then began making up for' her lost sleep by going to bed early and sleeping after lunch. Immediately her average o£ mistakes became greater, and within sixteen days of the beginning of tho test she was making over 200 mistakes 1 She was feeling in very good form, and believed she was making very few mistakes. The tapo was not examined till the sixteenth day*

Tho result of the exporimants suggested that there was an anti-toxin to, fatigue, and that some people naturally inoculated themselves. The effect of fatigue upon a fatigued state was similar to the effect of fatigue upon tho normal, viz., improvement.

This was of importance in the industrial world. What seemed to be carelessness in a railway signalman might bo due to the second stage of fatigue, which was more dangerous to the comnlunity than .the first. She expressed tho hope that a biochemical-psychologist would discover the anti-toxin to fatigue.