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Biomedical subjects

R F Job

Publications and source records attributed to R F Job.

17 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Chronic aircraft noise exposure, stress responses, mental health and cognitive performance in school children.

BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests that children are a high risk group vulnerable to the effects of chronic noise exposure. However, questions remain about the nature of the noise effects and the underlying causal mechanisms. This study addresses the effects of aircraft noise exposure on children around London Heathrow airport, in terms of stress responses, mental health and cognitive performance. The research also focuses on the underlying causal mechanisms contributing to the cognitive effects and potential confounding factors. METHODS: The cognitive performance and health of 340 children aged 8-11 years attending four schools in high aircraft noise areas (16 h outdoor Leq > 66 dBA) was compared with children attending four matched control schools exposed to lower levels of aircraft noise (16 h outdoor Leq < 57 dBA). Mental health and cognitive tests were group administered to the children in the schools. Salivary cortisol was measured in a subsample of children. RESULTS: Chronic aircraft noise exposure was associated with higher levels of noise annoyance and poorer reading comprehension measured by standardized scales with adjustments for age, deprivation and main language spoken. Chronic aircraft noise was not associated with mental health problems and raised cortisol secretion. The association between aircraft noise exposure and reading comprehension could not be accounted for by the mediating role of annoyance, confounding by social class, deprivation, main language or acute noise exposure. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that chronic aircraft noise exposure is associated with impaired reading comprehension and high levels of noise annoyance but not mental health problems in children.

Aircraft↗
PubMed2001

A follow-up study of effects of chronic aircraft noise exposure on child stress responses and cognition.

BACKGROUND: Children are a high-risk group vulnerable to the effects of chronic aircraft noise exposure. This study examines the effects of aircraft noise exposure on children's health and cognition around London Heathrow airport and tests sustained attention as an underlying mechanism of effects of noise on reading and examines the way children adapt to continued exposure to aircraft noise. METHODS: In this repeated measures epidemiological field study, the cognitive performance and health of 275 children aged 8-11 years attending four schools in high aircraft noise areas (16-h outdoor Leq > 66 dBA) was compared with children attending four matched control schools exposed to lower levels of aircraft noise (16-h outdoor Leq < 57 dBA). The children first examined at baseline were examined again after a period of one year at follow-up. Health questionnaires and cognitive tests were group administered to the children in the schools. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: At follow-up chronic aircraft noise exposure was associated with higher levels of annoyance and perceived stress, poorer reading comprehension and sustained attention, measured by standardized scales after adjustment for age, social deprivation and main language spoken. These results do not support the sustained attention hypothesis previously used to account for the effects of noise on cognition in children. The reading and annoyance effects do not habituate over a one-year period and do not provide strong evidence of adaptation.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2001

General scales of community reaction to noise (dissatisfaction and perceived affectedness) are more reliable than scales of annoyance.

General measures of reaction to noise, which assess the respondent's perceived affectedness or dissatisfaction, appear to be more valid and internally consistent than more narrow measures, such as specific assessment of noise annoyance. However, the test-retest reliability of general and specific measures has yet to be compared. As a part of the large-scale Sydney Airport Health Study, 97 respondents participated in the same interview twice, several weeks apart. Test-retest reliabilities were found to be significant (p < 0.001) for two general questions and three specific "annoyance" questions. The general measures were significantly more valid for four of the six correlations (with activity disturbance), and more stable than the annoyance scales for five of the six possible test-retest comparisons. Amongst 1,015 respondents at Time 1, the questions regarding general reaction were more internally consistent than the questions regarding annoyance. Taken together, these data indicate that general measures of reaction to noise have superior psychometric properties (validity, internal consistency, and stability) compared with measures of specific reactions such as annoyance.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Event-specific versus unitary causal accounts of optimism bias.

Optimism bias is often assumed to have a unitary cause regardless of the event, however, factors causing it may actually be event-specific. In Experiment 1 (N = 23), subjects rated the importance of various causes for individual events. The results identified consistent differences in perceptions of causal factors across events. Experiment 2 (N = 190) employed the possible causal factors absent/exempt error and degree of motivation to investigate an event-specific theory of optimism bias in a manipulation design. Participants were encouraged to view one causal factor (absent/exempt or motivation) as either important or unimportant to future risk when they estimated their risk of absent/exempt-related, motivation-related and unrelated events (as determined in Experiment 1). A hanging control group received no manipulation. The event-specific theory's prediction that these manipulations would affect particular events and not others were not supported. However, discouraging the absent/exempt error reduced optimism bias across events, generally. Hence, a unitary and not an event-specific theory of optimism bias was supported. Furthermore, for the first time, the possible role of and confounding of cognitive manipulations of optimism bias by mood were evaluated, and not supported.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Inhibition of adenosine deaminase by erythro-9-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl)adenine (EHNA) mimics the effect of inescapable shock on escape learning in rats.

Three experiments examined the role of adenosine neuroregulation in the production of shuttle-escape deficits caused by prior exposure to inescapable electric shock in rats (learned helplessness). Intracerebroventricular administration of erythro-9-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl)adenine (EHNA), a selective adenosine deaminase inhibitor, mimicked the effect of earlier inescapable shock at a dose of 2.5 microM in previously restrained rats. Performance deficits produced by EHNA or by earlier exposure to inescapable shock were reversed by intraperitoneal injection of 10 mg/kg caffeine, an adenosine receptor antagonist. Finally, preexposure to an ineffective number of shocks interacted in synergy with an ineffective pretest dose (1.0 microM) of EHNA to maximize shuttle-escape latencies. These data implicate endogenous adenosine neuroregulation as a proximate mechanism in learned helplessness and conservation-withdrawal.

Adenine↗
PubMed1997

Motor vehicle accidents, fatigue and optimism bias in taxi drivers.

Fatigue-related variables and their relationship with accident involvement were examined in a group of 42 Sydney metropolitan taxi drivers across a 2-year period. Advantages associated with the study of this group of road users include their important role in public transport, long hours spent on the road, job-related controls of exposure through shift patterns and the ability to verify accidents with company insurance records. Number and length of breaks, employment type, falling asleep at the wheel and a variety of other job-related and attitudinal variables were surveyed. Results provide basic data on fatigue-related aspects of the job of taxi driving. Driver time-on-the-road is often considerable: 67% of those surveyed drove at least 50 hours per week, yet time off in long shifts (up to 12 hours) was often short (as low as 3 minutes, with an average of 37 minutes). Self report of accidents proved reliable against insurance company records. A significant negative correlation between total average break time and accident rate was observed. Optimism bias was present for a variety of driving-related questions, including the ability to drive safely while fatigued.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed1996

Sources and effects of low-frequency noise.

The sources of human exposure to low-frequency noise and its effects are reviewed. Low-frequency noise is common as background noise in urban environments, and as an emission from many artificial sources: road vehicles, aircraft, industrial machinery, artillery and mining explosions, and air movement machinery including wind turbines, compressors, and ventilation or air-conditioning units. The effects of low-frequency noise are of particular concern because of its pervasiveness due to numerous sources, efficient propagation, and reduced efficacy of many structures (dwellings, walls, and hearing protection) in attenuating low-frequency noise compared with other noise. Intense low-frequency noise appears to produce clear symptoms including respiratory impairment and aural pain. Although the effects of lower intensities of low-frequency noise are difficult to establish for methodological reasons, evidence suggests that a number of adverse effects of noise in general arise from exposure to low-frequency noise: Loudness judgments and annoyance reactions are sometimes reported to be greater for low-frequency noise than other noises for equal sound-pressure level; annoyance is exacerbated by rattle or vibration induced by low-frequency noise; speech intelligibility may be reduced more by low-frequency noise than other noises except those in the frequency range of speech itself, because of the upward spread of masking. On the other hand, it is also possible that low-frequency noise provides some protection against the effects of simultaneous higher frequency noise on hearing. Research needs and policy decisions, based on what is currently known, are considered.

Auditory Threshold↗
PubMed1995

A controlled study of anxiety and morbid cognitions at initial screening for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in a cohort of people with haemophilia.

AIM: This study examines the relationship between anxiety, psychological state and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) stages as defined by the Centers for Disease Control at the time of initial screening for HIV in a cohort of people with haemophilia who were at risk of prior exposure to HIV transmission from blood products. METHOD: Psychological scores, immunological measures, and clinical data from case notes for 116 potentially HIV exposed people with haemophilia attending initial screening for HIV infection in 1984-1985, were used to examine the relationship between psychological variables, clinical state and their clinical classification under the Centres for Disease Control categorization. Psychometric test results were obtained for 63 HIV seronegative patients and 53 HIV seropositive patients. Planned comparisons, multiple and logistic regressions, were used to explain observed differences between seronegative and seropositive subjects. The potential confounders of sex, age, severity of haemophilia, haemophilia type and blood product usage were controlled. RESULTS: The major finding of this study was that higher levels of State Anxiety at the time of initial screening for HIV, were observed in those patients who lacked recognized symptoms of HIV infection and were seropositive, compared with seronegative subjects. The State Anxiety scores were predicted by HIV infection or alternatively CD4+ T-cell levels. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest that HIV infection can produce psychological effects prior to any physical symptoms of infection being apparent.

AIDS Serodiagnosis↗
PubMed1995

Stress and consumption: inescapable shock, neophobia, and quinine finickiness in rats.

Exposure to inescapable shock has been shown to result in reduced consumption of quinine in water (the finickiness effect) in rats. In the present experiment, (a) a clear difference in finickiness occurred between male adult rats exposed to inescapable shock and those exposed to escapable shock (the first such demonstration), (b) finickiness was reinstated 20 days later, and (c) finickiness was eliminated by quinine exposure prior to treatment. The first 2 results support the role of uncontrollability and/or unpredictability in finickiness and extend its potential impact to long-term consequences. This allows greater potential for the modeling of long-term effects, such as eating disorders and depression in humans. The finding that preexposure to quinine eliminated finickiness is contrary to current accounts of the effect. Accounts of finickiness are proposed in terms of classically conditioned aversions, bitterness, and neuropeptide control of ingestion.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Total plasma cholesterol levels of rats are increased following only three sessions of tailshock.

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were maintained for three weeks on one of three different diets. Two of the diets were high-cholesterol, high-fat, while the third was standard laboratory chow. Animals from each group were then given either daily 2 hr sessions of tailshock for three days, or left in their home cage. Blood samples were taken from all subjects prior to stress, and again immediately after the third stress session. Sera were separated and analyzed for total plasma cholesterol. Results indicate that total plasma cholesterol was increased in the stressed animals maintained on standard lab chow. Stressed animals in the two high cholesterol diet groups showed no cholesterol increase relative to their respective dietary controls.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

Reconsideration of the role of competing responses in demonstrations of the interference effect (learned helplessness).

In Experiment 1a, rats trained to escape shock by performing a 2-s inactive response were less impaired on a subsequent 2-way shuttle response than their yoked counterparts that received inescapable shock. In contrast, in Experiment 1b, rats trained to escape shock by performing a longer duration inactive response were more impaired on the subsequent escape task than their inescapably shocked counterparts. In Experiment 2, the results of Experiments 1a and 1b were replicated, and the inactive responses performed during pretreatment by both the escapable and inescapable shock groups were assessed and correlated with test stage 2-way shuttle escape performance. These activity data indicate that inactivity during pretreatment shock in both escapable and inescapable shock groups was a highly reliable predictor of subsequent 2-way shuttle performance, irrespective of the pretreatment shock contingency to which these Ss were exposed.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

The application of learning theory to driving confidence: the effect of age and the impact of random breath testing.

Despite the dangers, many drivers continue to take risks when driving. This paper outlines an explanation of this risk-taking behavior and the failure of numerous fear-arousing messages to change the manner in which many people drive. Being an occupant in a car and learning to drive may be seen as analogous to systemic desensitization and flooding procedures, in which fear is extinguished and/or a response inconsistent with fear is learned. Once this procedure is complete the fear response is unlikely to be reinstated by messages pointing out possible dangers on the road, because the situations in which the messages are received are usually inappropriate, and many believe that they are superior drivers and therefore not at risk. News presentation of the huge road toll and multiple fatality crashes may only confirm to many people that they are better than average drivers since so many other people have been killed or seriously injured, and they, the superior drivers, have not. A prediction of this account is that driving confidence will increase with increasing age, through the greater on-road fear-reducing experience and increased exposure to the road toll. This prediction was examined in surveys of 2,963 Australian drivers, conducted as part of the evaluation of random breath testing. Respondents were asked to rate their ability as drivers compared with average, and to rate their ability to drive under the influence of alcohol. The overconfidence observed in Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United States was identified in Australian drivers. The predicted increase in confidence with increasing age was supported up to the age of 40 years, after which confidence changed little. Confidence in ability to drive after consuming alcohol increased steadily with age. Finally, it was predicted that the introduction of random breath testing and the associated media campaign partly about the effects of alcohol (which was successful in reducing the road toll) would decrease confidence in ability to drive under the influence of alcohol. Comparison of survey data before and after the introduction of random breath testing did not support this prediction.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed1982

Does diazepam affect driving ability?

Landauer (Med J Aust, 1981; 1: 624-626) contended that diazepam medication should not preclude car driving, since it relieves anxiety, aggression and depression. There is no clear evidence that diazepam's therapeutic effect improves driving. The bulk of evidence suggests that diazepam is harmful to driving ability even in appropriate patient populations. The detrimental effects of alcohol on driving ability are also exacerbated by diazepam. I would recommend that patients taking diazepam should avoid driving, especially if they have taken any alcohol.

Accidents, Traffic↗