Leyla Tavacioglu

A mobile application for cognitive screening of dementia

Neuropsychological assessment tests have an important role in early detection of dementia. Therefore, we designed and implemented a test battery for mobile devices that can be used for mobile cognitive screening (MCS). This battery consists of 33 questions from 14 type of tests for the assessment of 8 different cognitive functions: Arithmetic, orientation, abstraction, attention, memory, language, visual, and executive functions. This test battery is implemented as an application for mobile devices that operates on Android OS. In order to validate the effectiveness of the neuropsychological test battery, it was applied on a group of 23 elderly persons. Within this group, 9 (of age 81.78±4.77) were healthy and 14 (of age 72.55±9.95) were already diagnosed with dementia. The education level of the control group (healthy) and dementia group were comparable as they spent 13.66±5.07 and 13.71±4.14 years at school respectively. For comparison, a validated paper-and-pencil test (Montreal Cognitive Test - MoCA) was applied along with the proposed MCS battery. The proposed test was able to differentiate the individuals in the control and dementia groups for executive, visual, memory, attention, orientation functions with statistical significance (p<0.05). Results of the remaining functions; language, abstraction, and arithmetic were statistically insignificant (p>0.05). The results of MCS and MoCA were compared, and the scores of individuals from these tests were correlated (r(2)=0.57).

The subjective measurement of seafarers’ fatigue levels and mental symptoms

Human error is the most important factor causing many ship accidents in maritime industry despite advanced technology and international regulations. Fatigue in seafarers is a well-known problem and a serious cause of ship accidents. There are many factors unique to the marine environment raising the potential for fatigue at sea. Due to the difficulties in measuring human fatigue and also in suggesting fatigue to be a root cause of accident, it is important to devise methods to detect and quantify the fatigue and mental symptoms. In this study, ‘Piper Fatigue Scale’ (PFS) has been used for measuring fatigue level and ‘Symptom Checklist 90- Revised’ (SCL-90-R) for detecting the severity of mental symptoms. Data analyses were performed using the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software. According to the results of PFS analysis, a slight degree of fatigue is detected in all sub-dimensions of the scale. According to the results of SCL-90-R analysis, the distress of mental symptoms perceived by seafarers is not generally highly detected. In conclusion, the purpose of this study is to determine, by using subjective measurements, the fatigue level and mental symptoms among seafarers caused by working conditions on-board.

Analysing the effects of working period on psychophysiological states of seafarers

BACKGROUNDnHuman factor has become a critical issue due to the fact that all operational processes in maritime transportation have been accelerated with technological innovations. Irregular and long working hours, rapid change of working environments and other organisational and/or individual factors have negative impact on the performance of the seafarers as well as other transportation workers and/or shift workers. Seafarers working under the influence of these stressor factors, naturally, are affected from psychophysiological and cognitive aspects, which in return decrease their overall performances. The study mainly aimed to investigate which of the above mentioned affecting factors had greater impact on seafarers performances.nnnMATERIALS AND METHODSnFor this purpose, data for 14 healthy male seafarers on board different vessels was collected. The collected data included the number of port visits, frequency of change of circadian rhythm, total working hours and watchkeeping periods in the recent month. In order to analyse the psychophysiological effect of working period, electrodermal activity and heart rate variability measurements for arousal mood and data from 2-choice reaction time tests for cognitive performance were collected from the seafarers.nnnRESULTSnObtained data was analysed in SPSS software programme applying multiple regression with factor analysis to model the dependence between psychophysiological states of seafarers and working periods.nnnCONCLUSIONSnAccording to the results, it was determined that the change of circadian rhythm is the main determinant factor for seafarers. The results showed that when seafarers circadian rhythm is changed more frequently, they experience more drowsiness.