Department of Ergonomics, Graduate School of Design, Kyushu University, Minami-ku, Fukuoka 815-8540, Japan.
J Physiol Anthropol. 2009 Nov;28(6):253-9. doi: 10.2114/jpa2.28.253.
It is well known that women are physiologically and psychologically influenced by the menstrual cycle. In addition, the presence of background noise may affect task performance. So far, it has proven difficult to describe how the menstrual cycle and background noise affect task performance; some researchers have found an increment of performance during menstruation or during the presence of noise, others found performance deterioration, while other still have reported no dominant effect either of the menstrual cycle in performance or of the presence of noise. However, no study to date has investigated the combinational effect between the menstrual cycle and the presence of background noise in task performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the combined factor effect of menstrual cycle and background noise on visual inspection task performance indices by Signal Detection Theory (SDT) metrics: sensitivity index (d') and response criteria index (beta). For this purpose, ten healthy female students (21.5+/-1.08 years) with a regular menstrual cycle participated in this study. A VDT-based visual inspection task was used for the experiment in 3x2 factorial designs. Two factors, menstrual phase, pre-menstruation (PMS), menstruation (M), and post-menstruation (PM) and background noise, with 80 dB(A) background noise and without noise, were analyzed as the main factors in this study. The results concluded that the sensitivity index (d') of SDT was affected in all the menstrual cycle conditions (p<0.01) and the presence of background noise (p<0.05) but no combinational effect of menstrual cycle and background noise was found in this study. On the other hand, no significant effect was observed in the subject's tendency in visual inspection, shown by beta along the menstrual cycle and the presence of background noise. According to the response criteria for each individual subject, the presence of noise affected the tendency of some subjects in detecting the object and making decision during the visual inspection task.
众所周知，女性的生理和心理会受到月经周期的影响。此外，背景噪声的存在也可能会影响任务表现。到目前为止，很难描述月经周期和背景噪声如何影响任务表现；一些研究人员发现，在月经期间或存在噪声时，表现会提高，而另一些研究人员则发现表现会恶化，还有一些研究人员则报告说，月经周期对表现或噪声的存在都没有主导影响。然而，迄今为止，没有研究调查过月经周期和背景噪声在任务表现中的组合效应。因此，本研究的目的是通过信号检测理论（SDT）指标来检验月经周期和背景噪声对视觉检查任务表现的综合因素效应：敏感性指标（d'）和响应标准指标（β）。为此，本研究招募了 10 名具有规律月经周期的健康女学生（21.5+/-1.08 岁）参与了这项研究。实验采用基于 VDT 的视觉检查任务，采用 3x2 因子设计。两个主要因素为月经周期，月经前期（PMS）、月经期（M）和月经后期（PM）和背景噪声，背景噪声为 80dB(A)和无噪声。结果表明，SDT 的敏感性指标（d'）在所有月经周期条件下都受到影响（p<0.01）和背景噪声的存在（p<0.05），但本研究未发现月经周期和背景噪声的组合效应。另一方面，在视觉检查中，受试者的倾向没有观察到显著影响，β在月经周期和背景噪声的存在下没有显著变化。根据每个个体受试者的响应标准，噪声的存在影响了一些受试者在视觉检查任务中检测目标和做出决策的倾向。
