Dexterity Performance and Reduced Ambient Temperature

This study examined the dexterity performance of 35 male and 35 female subjects at ambient temperatures of 1.7°C, 12.8°C, and 23.9°C. Subjects wore typical industrial worker apparel without gloves. The Purdue Pegboard, two pencil-point tapping tasks, an assembly task, and a fine manipulative task were used to measure the dexterity performance. Results indicate that after approximately 15 min of exposure there was no difference between performance at 12.8°C and 23.9°C, but there was a difference between performance at 1.7°C and 12.8°C as well as between performance at 1.7°C and 23.9°C. The decrement in performance at 1.7°C ranged from 0.3 to 15.7% when compared with performance at 23.9°C . In five of the 11 performance scores used, a difference due to gender was seen, with the males performing better on an assembly task and the females performing better on single-activity, repetitive tasks. At the higher ambient temperatures (12.8°C and 23.9°C), the average of the minimum finger skin temperature for males was from 0.57°C to 1.2°C higher than for females, whereas at 1.7°C there was no significant difference between the groups for minimum finger skin temperature.