Behavioral aspects of human adaptation to space: analyses of cognitive and psychomotor performance in space during an 8-day space mission

Abstract

Living in the space environment and exposure to microgravity induce a number of effects that may interfere with human cognitive and psychomotor performance. However, up to now very few attempts have been made to monitor possible impairments of human performance during space missions. In the present single-case study several cognitive and psychomotor functions were monitored during an 8-day space mission to an orbital station using a computerized performance monitoring device. This device included four different tasks, which were selected from a battery of Standardized Tests for Research with Environmental Stressors published recently by the NATO Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development, and which demanded logical reasoning and decision-making functions, memory retrieval functions, and fine manual control. Each task was performed 23 times (6 preflight, 13 inflight, 4 postflight sessions). By means of single-subject statistics inflight performance was compared with baseline performance during pre- and postflight sessions. In accordance with the few previous performance studies conducted during space flights, speed and accuracy of short-term memory retrieval and logical reasoning functions remained unimpaired during the stay in space. However, clear decrements in tracking performance were found, showing to increased difficulties in fine manual control. These results suggest that performance decrements in space may arise primarily in psychomotor functions due to alterations requiring an effortful accommodation of motor skills which had been acquired under 1-g conditions to the new conditions of microgravity.