Occupational Safety and Health of Women in Mining.

The mining industry plays a critical role in the U.S. economy, with active mines in every state producing materials such as those used to construct houses and roads, make medicines, and manufacture cars and electronics. Throughout its history, mining has been a male-dominated industry. Recent estimates indicate that between 10% and 17% of miners are women. Previous occupational safety and health (OSH) research has focused primarily on the male experience. In more recent years, the mining industry has engaged in efforts to increase workforce diversity through the recruitment and retention of women miners. To meet the needs of a diverse workforce, it is critically important to identify OSH concerns that are unique to populations that have been understudied and to develop work-related policies and practices that improve their work experiences and health outcomes. The purpose of this article is to describe the specific OSH challenges women as miners face and to discuss how the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) Mining Program is situated to address these challenges through its Mining Program Strategic Plan.

Effects of heat strain on cognitive function among a sample of miners.

Heat stress is associated with workplace injuries, likely through a combination of fatigue, reduced cognitive function, and thermal discomfort. The purpose of this study was to evaluate four cognitive tasks for sensitivity to heat stress. Eight participants performed treadmill exercise followed by assessments of serial reaction time (RT), Stroop effect, verbal delayed memory, and continuous performance working memory in an environmental chamber. A control (21.1 °C) trial, and "Hot 1" and "Hot 2" (both 37.8 °C) trials were run sequentially on two separate days to evaluate the four cognitive tasks. Heat strain (comparing Hot 1 and Hot 2 with the control trial) resulted in impairments in the serial RT test response and Stroop accuracy. Delayed memory was impacted only in the Hot 2 trial compared with the control trial. Given the demonstrated impact of heat on cognitive processes relevant to workers' real-world functioning in the workplace, understanding how to assess and monitor vigilant attention in the workplace is essential.

Findings from a systematic review of fatigue interventions: What's (not) being tested in mining and other industrial environments.

BACKGROUND: Fatigue negatively impacts mineworker health and safety. In this paper, we identify fatigue interventions tested on industrial shiftworkers and explore their effects and the factors that may influence application in an industrial setting such as a mine site. METHODS: This review adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist. A structured, systematic search of the literature was conducted to identify relevant studies published between 1980 and 2020. Researchers independently conducted article screening and study quality appraisals against pre-established criteria, and then extracted data and conducted a narrative synthesis of the included studies. RESULTS: Seven intervention studies, out of 1651 articles initially screened, were retained for narrative synthesis. Four studies tested the alerting effects of bright-light treatment, one evaluated the effectiveness of blue-light blocking glasses at improving daytime sleep quality and nighttime vigilance, and two examined whether sleep hygiene and alertness management trainings improved sleep quality or alertness. There was substantial evidence for the use of bright-light treatments to improve night shiftworker alertness, but insufficient evidence to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of blue-light blocking glasses and sleep hygiene and alertness management trainings due to the small number of studies included. Shiftworkers were mostly male and employed in industrial subsectors such as production and manufacturing, oil and gas, and transportation. No mining-specific intervention studies were identified. CONCLUSIONS: Future research is needed to identify effective fatigue risk management interventions for the mining industry as well as best practices for implementing these interventions with mineworkers.

Analysis of Fall-Related Imminent Danger Orders in the Metal/Nonmetal Mining Sector.

Within the metal/nonmetal mining sector, fall-related incidents account for a large proportion of fatal and non-fatal injuries. However, the events and contributing factors leading up to these incidents have not been fully investigated. To help provide a clearer picture of these factors, an analysis of imminent danger orders issued by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) between 2010 and 2017 at both surface and underground metal/nonmetal mine sites revealed that most orders are associated with fall risks. Of these cases, 84% involved the workers not using fall protection, fall protection not being provided, or the improper use of fall protection. Fall risks for workers most frequently occurred when standing on mobile equipment, performing maintenance and repairs on plant equipment, or working near highwalls. In most cases, a single, basic, corrective action (e.g., using fall protection) would have allowed workers to perform the task safely. Overall, these findings suggest that a systematic approach is needed to identify, eliminate, and prevent imminent danger situations. Furthermore, to protect mineworkers from falls from height, frequently performed tasks requiring fall protection should be redesigned to eliminate the reliance on personal fall protection.

Identify the Influence of Risk Attitude, Work Experience, and Safety Training on Hazard Recognition in Mining.

Mineworkers face a challenging and dynamic work environment every workday. To maintain a safe workplace, mineworkers must be able to recognize worksite hazards while they perform their jobs. Though hazard recognition is a critical skill, recent research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) indicates that mineworkers fail to identify a significant number of hazards. To further the understanding of mineworkers' hazard recognition ability and to begin to address hazard recognition performance, NIOSH researchers analyzed data collected during a laboratory research study to determine the effect of individual mineworker factors including risk attitude, work experience, and safety training on hazard recognition accuracy. The results of this study show that mineworker risk attitude and safety-specific work experience affect hazard recognition performance while hazard-specific safety training does not. These results suggest that some of these individual factors can be overcome through experience and training. Potential strategies that can be used to address these factors are also discussed.

Visual feedback system to reduce errors while operating roof bolting machines.

PROBLEM: Operators of roof bolting machines in underground coal mines do so in confined spaces and in very close proximity to the moving equipment. Errors in the operation of these machines can have serious consequences, and the design of the equipment interface has a critical role in reducing the probability of such errors. METHODS: An experiment was conducted to explore coding and directional compatibility on actual roof bolting equipment and to determine the feasibility of a visual feedback system to alert operators of critical movements and to also alert other workers in close proximity to the equipment to the pending movement of the machine. The quantitative results of the study confirmed the potential for both selection errors and direction errors to be made, particularly during training. RESULTS: Subjective data confirmed a potential benefit of providing visual feedback of the intended operations and movements of the equipment. IMPACT: This research may influence the design of these and other similar control systems to provide evidence for the use of warning systems to improve operator situational awareness.

Visual word recognition during reading is followed by subvocal articulation.

Three experiments examined whether the identification of a visual word is followed by its subvocal articulation during reading. An irrelevant spoken word (ISW) that was identical, phonologically similar, or dissimilar to a visual target word was presented when the eyes moved to the target in the course of sentence reading. Sentence reading was further accompanied by either a sequential finger tapping task (Experiment 1) or an articulatory suppression task (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed sound-specific interference from a phonologically similar ISW during posttarget viewing. This interference was absent in Experiment 2, where similar and dissimilar ISWs impeded target and posttarget reading equally. Experiment 3 showed that articulatory suppression left the lexical processing of visual words intact and that it did not diminish the influence of visual word recognition on eye guidance. The presence of sound-specific interference during posttarget reading in Experiment 1 is attributed to deleterious effects of a phonologically similar ISW on the subvocal articulation of a target. Its absence in Experiment 2 is attributed to the suppression of a target's subvocal articulation.

Visual word recognition is accompanied by covert articulation: evidence for a speech-like phonological representation.

Two lexical decision task (LDT) experiments examined whether visual word recognition involves the use of a speech-like phonological code that may be generated via covert articulation. In Experiment 1, each visual item was presented with an irrelevant spoken word (ISW) that was either phonologically identical, similar, or dissimilar to it. An ISW delayed classification of a visual word when the two were phonologically similar, and it delayed the classification of a pseudoword when it was identical to the base word from which the pseudoword was derived. In Experiment 2, a LDT was performed with and without articulatory suppression, and pseudowords consisted of regular pseudowords and pseudohomophones. Articulatory suppression decreased sound-specific ISW effects for words and regular pseudowords but not for pseudohomophones. These findings indicate that the processing of an orthographically legal letter sequence generally involves the specification of more than one sound code, one of which involves covert articulation.

Temporal overlap in the linguistic processing of successive words in reading: reply to Pollatsek, Reichle, and Rayner (2006a).

A. Pollatsek, E. D. Reichle, and K. Rayner argue that the critical findings in A. W. Inhoff, B. M. Eiter, and R. Radach are in general agreement with core assumptions of sequential attention shift models if additional assumptions and facts are considered. The current authors critically discuss the hypothesized time line of processing and indicate that the success of Pollatsek et al.'s simulation is predicated on a gross underestimation of the pretarget word's viewing duration in Inhoff et al. and that the actual data are difficult to reconcile with the strictly serial attention shift assumption. The authors also discuss attention shifting and saccade programming assumptions in the E-Z Reader model and conclude that these are not in harmony with research in related domains of study.

Time course of linguistic information extraction from consecutive words during eye fixations in reading.

Sequential attention shift models of reading predict that an attended (typically fixated) word must be recognized before useful linguistic information can be obtained from the following (parafoveal) word. These models also predict that linguistic information is obtained from a parafoveal word immediately prior to a saccade toward it. To test these assumptions, sentences were constructed with a critical pretarget-target word sequence, and the temporal availability of the (parafoveal) target preview was manipulated while the pretarget word was fixated. Target viewing effects, examined as a function of prior target visibility, revealed that extraction of linguistic target information began 70-140 ms after the onset of pretarget viewing. Critically, acquisition of useful linguistic information from a target was not confined to the ending period of pretarget viewing. These results favor theoretical conceptions in which there is some temporal overlap in the linguistic processing of a fixated and parafoveally visible word during reading.

Phonological representation of words in working memory during sentence reading.

The temporal dynamics of a visual target word's phonological representation was examined by presentation of an irrelevant spoken companion word when the participant's eyes reached the target's location during sentence reading. The spoken word was identical, similar, or dissimilar to the phonological specification of the visual target. All spoken words increased the time spent viewing the target, with larger effects in the similar and dissimilar spoken word conditions than in the identical condition. The reading of posttarget text was disrupted when the spoken word was similar but not when it was identical or dissimilar to the target. Phonological interference indicates that a word's phonological representation remains active after it has been identified during sentence reading.

Even with a green card, you can be put out to pasture and still have to work: non-native intuitions of the transparency of common English idioms.

Native speakers of English use idioms such as put your foot down and spill the beans to label events that are not described literally by the words that compose the idioms. For many such expressions, the idiomatic meanings are transparent; that is, the connection between the literal expression and its figurative meaning makes sense to native speakers. We tested Keysar and Bly's (1995) hypothesis that this sense of transparency for the meaning of everyday idioms does not necessarily obtain because the idiomatic meanings are derived from motivating literal meanings or conceptual metaphors, but rather (at least in part) because language users construct explanations after the fact for whatever meaning is conventionally assigned to the expression. Non-native speakers of English were exposed to common English idioms and taught either the conventional idiomatic meaning or an alternative meaning. In agreement with Keysar and Bly's suggestion, their subsequent sense of transparency was greater for the meaning that the speakers had learned and used, regardless of which one it was.

Exterior letters are not privileged in the early stage of visual word recognition during reading: comment on Jordan, Thomas, Patching and Scott-Brown (2003).

Potential sources for the discrepancy between the letter position effects in T. R. Jordan, S. M. Thomas, G. R. Patching, and K. C. Scott-Brown's (2003; see record 2003-07955-013) and D. Briihl and A. W. Inhoff s (1995; see record 1995-20036-001) studies are examined. The authors conclude that the lack of control over where useful information is acquired during reading in Jordan et al.'s study, rather than differences in the orthographic consistency and the availability of word shape information, account for the discrepant effect pattern in the 2 studies. The processing of a word during reading begins before it is fixated, when beginning letters occupy a particularly favorable parafoveal location that is independent of word length. Knowledge of parafoveal word length cannot be used to selectively process exterior letters during the initial phase of visual word recognition.

Distinct subsystems for the parafoveal processing of spatial and linguistic information during eye fixations in reading.

Two experiments examined readers' use of parafoveally obtained word length information for word recognition. Both experiments manipulated the length (number of constituent characters) of a parafoveally previewed target word so that it was either accurately or inaccurately specified. In Experiment 1, previews also either revealed or denied useful orthographic information. In Experiment 2, parafoveal targets were either high- or low-frequency words. Eye movement contingent display changes were used to show the intact target upon its fixation. Examination of target viewing duration showed completely additive effects of word length previews and of ortho-graphic previews in Experiment 1, viewing duration being shorter in the accurate-length and the orthographic preview conditions. Experiment 2 showed completely additive effects of word length and word frequency, target viewing being shorter in the accurate-length and the high-frequency conditions. Together these results indicate that functionally distinct subsystems control the use of parafoveally visible spatial and linguistic information in reading. Parafoveally visible spatial information appears to be used for two distinct extralinguistic computations: visual object selection and saccade specification.

Knowledge of word length does not constrain word identification.

Use of word length for word identification was examined in three naming experiments and one sentence reading experiment in which a foveally presented cue either matched or mismatched the length of a subsequently presented target word. Properties of the target were also manipulated so that it was either a high- or low-frequency word or so that its exterior letters were either consistent with a large or small pool of candidate words. The experiments converged in showing that effects of prior word length cuing were either negligible or absent. The word frequency of the target influenced its recognition but not the lexical constraint of its exterior letters. Importantly, effects of target word properties did not interact with effects of prior target length cuing. Together, these results indicate that knowledge of a word's spatial properties does not constrain its lexical processing.