Differential Diagnosis of the Ability to Develop the Skill of Relaxation in the Drivers of Locomotive Crews

Abstract

The effectiveness of biofeedback trainings to develop relaxation skills was investigated using the NeuroDog hardware and software complex. Discriminant analysis (a method of multivariate statistical analysis) was carried out, which made it possible to assess the quality and accuracy of the grouping of drivers and assistant drivers of locomotive crews into groups with varying degrees of successful development of the relaxation skill. Highlighted the most informative signs of dividing drivers into groups. The accuracy of the presented groups was checked using linear qualification functions, the informativeness of the features was assessed by Fisher's F-criterion. The critical level of significance when testing statistical hypotheses is p < 0.05. In the course of discriminant analysis, a number of characteristics necessary for the interpretation of groups and their differences were calculated, such as: linear classification functions, canonical discriminant functions, and factor load of canonical discriminant functions. Informative differential diagnostic signs for diagnostics of locomotive crew drivers for the development of relaxation skills were shown. Formulas of linear qualifying functions are given. The diagnostic accuracy was 84.91 % on average.

Keywords

• biofeedback
• skin electrodermal activity
• self-regulation
• relaxation skill development
• functional state
• discriminant analysis
• modeling