The influence of change in environment temperature on the body function of the aged was investigated using artificially cooled and warmed rooms that are experienced in a wooden house during midwinter in Japan. Room temperature of cooled and warmed rooms was kept at 10°C and 25°C, respectively, and relative humidity and constant air current were set at 50% and 20 cm/sec in the both rooms. Subjects consisted of 10 old women, aged from 63 to 79, and 10 controls, aged from 20 to 22. Throughout the experimental period, subjects put on the specified clothes which showed the warmth keeping value 0.63 clo in case worn by a thermal-mannequin. Although no difference in the average skin temperature was observed between the aged group and controls, the aged group showed a sharp rise in the maximum blood pressure and had a difficulty in decreasing arousal level during the rest period in the cooled room. Evaluation of subjective replies concerning coldness, warmth and comfort, revealed a significant difference in the aged group between immediately and in 37 minutes after the change in room temperature. This suggests the aged group indicates the delayed sensitivity to change in environment temperature with aging.

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Behaviours of computer software developers on analysis phase, detail design phase, test phase and documentation phase were analyzed in order to investigate the work conditions which are suitable for software development tasks. The observed element tasks were put in order from the view point of information creation of human. Appear ance rate of element tasks in a day, duration period of time of each element task were analyzed. Relation between element tasks was also analyzed with cross and HAYASHI 4 theories. These results show such tendency that there is a relation of transition among thinking, VDT task, writing and arrangement on desk as refreshment behaviour. Based on the results, environmental conditions for software development tasks were discussed.

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The three-dimensional optometer which can measure simultaneously three major ocular functions-eye accommodation, eye movement and iris area change-in a real working situation was applied to measure visual responses gazing at (1) actual artworks, and (2) planes presented by moving random dots on a CRT. Both of the stimuli were presented at the fixed positions from the subjects and the measurements were performed under a normal lighting condition. Two subjects showed clear accommodative responses for the both stimuli. The paper discussed that the result infers a plausible cause for the visual fatigue induced by viewing at stereoscopic pictures.

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A simple optimal control model suitable for an analysis of human operator's optimal control action was proposed in a compensatory manual tracking control systems, and the basic analysis was carried out to discuss the relation between the weight matrix of the quadratic criterion function and the repetitive effect of the trials. The results obtained are as follows (1) Assuming that the human's control action is approximated with PID action and low-pass filter, the simple optimal control model of human operator can be identified only by the error signal and the manipulated variable which can be observed directly by human operator. (2) The numerical simulation of the model gives satisfactory agreement with the human's operation. (3) The weight matrix changes as the tria increases, and it is a useful index for the analysis of the repetitive effect of human operator.

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This paper describes the mental workload of blind travellers with different degrees of travel experience, visual impairment and preliminary geographical knowledge of routes measured by a secondary task. The secondary task in this study was a two-choice reaction problem that required the subjects to respond to one of the two kinds of vibratory stimuli of different frequencies on their skin by pressing a button carried in their non-dominant hands. The subjects were asked to perform the secondary task concurrently on their independent and guided travels along two test routes of different complexity. The performance measures for the secondary task show that mental workload of blind travellers depends on complexity of the route and degrees of travel experience, visual impairment and preliminary knowledge of the route, and also that the task demand of the independent travel exceeds their information processing capacity in case of particular behavioral events such as stepping down from a curb and crossing a street.

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Man shows interest in moving things, such as toys, robots, vehicles or machines. A large number of motion patterns are proposed in the fields of mechanical engineering. Cybernetics motion is a kind of mechanical motion pattern and it shows a smooth and noiseless characteristic. This new proposed motion pattern will give agreeable feelings to man who sees the motion. Individual person, who look at a moving article according to different motion patterns, will have his own different emotions. In order to obtain the emotional differences of subjects among motions of cybernetics, cycloidal, two stepped constant speed and constant rate, the simulated door movements were displayed on a computer CRT and showed them to 461 subjects, and also showed a flat plate which was forced to move up-and-down by means of a servo-mechanism to 67 subjects. Data of each subject were obtained by semantic differentials, and the data were analyzed by means of a factor analysis. As the results, it was found that the cybernetics motion gave the most agreeable and speedy feelings, and the cycloidal motion was the second, the two stepped constant speed motion pattern was the third, and the constant rate gave the most offensive and slowly feelings to the subjects.

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