New psychophysiologic approaches applied in occupational selection of candidates for dangerous professions

Abstract

Introduction. In increased requirements to occupational and personal qualities of workers engaged into or applying for dangerous professions, effi ciency of occupational selection considerably depends on choice of methodic approaches adequate to the study objectives. Objective. To study psychophysiologic approaches to evaluation of social psychologic reliability and occupational fi tness of individuals with dangerous professions, for revealing prognostic facilities of new methods and for improving occupational selection for military and police offi cers. Materials and methods. Psychophysiologic studies used eye-tracker SMI-RED–250 and polygraph “Diana” and covered 201 candidates for service in various divisions of RF Investigating Committ ee. Major part of the examinees consisted of individuals aged under 30 years (134 males and 67 females). All the candidates had normal vision or corrected to normal one. Evoked brain potentials study covered 114 candidates for military service (2 females and 112 males) aged 17 to 52 years. According to polygraph study, 51.8% of the examinees demonstrated a risk factor of “drug use”. Results. Th e authors presented results of psychophysiologic studies of occupational fi tness in candidates for military and police service. Nowadays, polygraph study remains a reliable method to reveal reactions proving presence of concealed information. Using evoked brain potentials for disclosing individuals who conceal drug usage is an important procedure in security maintenance. Within a standard polygraph procedure, videooculography (eye-tracker) seems the most interesting. Th e studies covered possible use of evoked EEG potentials and eye-tracker along with polygraph study for personnel checkups. Conclusions. Occupational selection in individuals with dangerous professions obtained experimental data indicating high effi ciency of combined use of eye-tracking and polygraph, for diagnosis of social psychologic reliability one can use soft ware of evoked brain potentials with demonstration of drugs-associated slides.