The Effect of Extremely Low Frequency Radiation on Human Performance: A Preliminary Study.

Abstract
Interest in the development of an extremely low frequency (ELF) communications system for naval use has resulted in a program to determine the effects of such fields on man. This report represents part of pilot level effort to develop a set of tests and procedures for determining whether ELF fields have any measureable effects on human memory and psychomotor functions. None of the tests exhibited significant performance decrements under the gross analytical conditions. The Wilkinson Adding Task exhibited significant performance decrements during the second of two testing sessions while being exposed to the ELF radiation. One of the Response Analysis Tester (RATER) conditions exhibited a significant improvement in performance. One subject had a significantly bad session in which his performance declined on 6 out 7 measures; however, this performance appeared to be unrelated to other psychological or physiological data. In view of the large number of statistical analyses performed on a limited amount of data, the few significant performance decrements must be interpreted with extreme caution. They identify techniques to be replicated in future research and nothing more. Individual differences in test performance were large, any effects due to the exposure to ELF magnetic fields were small; consequently, special consideration should be given to the possibility of using an exposure-reexposure experimental design in any future experiments.

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