Individual Variability in Human Response to Whole-body Vibration

This paper reports an experiment to obtain an equal sensation contour for whole-body vibration using an entirely new, but demonstrably valid and reliable, paradigm. Instead of requiring subjects to equate variable vibration stimuli of different frequencies with a fixed standard stimulus, the paradigm employed a series of matching tasks with the standard stimulus being produced by the subject in the previous matching task. The individual sensation contours produced provided strong indications of important significant differences between subjects with respect to response to vibration. Implications of these differences for the study of human response to vibration are discussed.