A Strategy for Research in Space Biology and Medicine in the New Century (1998) / Chapter Skim
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12 Behavioral Issues
12 Behavioral Issues
Pages 194-230
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From page 194... ...
This chapter discusses the factors that affect behavior and performance during the preflight, inflight, and postflight phases of manned space missions, and it makes recommendations for research and changes in operations to ensure crew members' safety, well-being, and productivity, along with mission success. As such, it is much broader in scope than the study of space human factors, which focuses on the role of humans in complex systems, the design of equipment and facilities for human use, and the development of environments for comfort and safety.2 Although these issues are not addressed here, the committee's objective is nevertheless to provide a comprehensive assessment of the current status and future direction of research in human behavior and performance in space.
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Nevertheless, the committee acknowledges the importance of utilizing approaches to the study of behavior and performance in space that seek to integrate these diverse sets of issues and designs. Definition and Assessment of Behavior and Performance in Space Research in human behavior and performance during long-duration missions is concerned with individual crew members and ground support personnel; groups of individuals who comprise the flight crews and ground support teams of specific missions; and the organizations that recruit, train, and support these individuals.
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In the past, emphasis has been placed on human behavior and performance research that is conducted in flight. However, research conducted during the extended period of training and preparation prior to the mission (preflight)
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The principal task in creating such a climate is providing access to the objects of study (i.e., space crews and ground control personnel)
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Greater efforts are required on the part of NASA to identify and recruit experts in human behavior and performance in space and analogue environments, as well as experts in disciplines that have relevance to the issues described below, to participate in such research, review grant proposals, and evaluate study findings. Greater efforts are also required on the part of investigators to publish many of the results that currently exist only in anecdotal form, abstracts of conference proceedings, or the "gray" literature of technical reports.
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It is important to establish how space crews assess and react to the continuous possibility and occasional occurrence of hazards and whether these processes differ in short-duration and long-duration missions. There is a critical need to examine the perceived likelihood and severity of risk factors, how the perceived risk influences the individual and group performance of the crew, and what countermeasures would minimize their fears.
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Monotony is another characteristic of isolated and confined environments that will likely influence behavior and performance on lonp-duration spacefliphts. Previous research in analopue settings indi 1 0 1 0 0 0 .
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The most important of these zeitgebers are day-night changes in light and temperature.39 Current plans for the International Space Station call for illumination levels ranging from 108 to 538 lux. This is much lower than the 2,500 lux necessary to entrain circadian rhythms in humans.40 Hence, some desynchronization of sleepwake and other circadian cycles would be expected to occur.
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During the Soyuz program, when sleep schedules were set counter to the local time of the launch site, cosmonauts experienced some degradation of performance and disturbed sleep.49 Early research under conditions of isolation revealed that human circadian rhythms tend to "free-run" for a period of approximately 25 hours.50 However, further research is required to determine the probability of major dissociations and desynchronizations in circadian systems under uniform or individualized work schedules in an isolated and confined environment and the long-term consequences of such Synchronizations. The environment used in most ground-based research is contrived, work activities set for subjects are often purposeless, and the experimental designs invariably involve solitary confinement without knowledge of time.5~ Evidence from analogue settings as to the costs and benefits of allowing personnel to "free-cycle" and set their own schedule versus maintaining a fixed work-rest schedule remains inconclusive.52~54 A third issue related to sleep during long-duration missions concerns the long-term effects of sleep deprivation.
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For instance, relatively pronounced HPA activation is common in depression, but it is unclear whether HPA activation causes or results from depressed affect. Studies in flight will be required to identify the cognitive and affective correlates of hormonal, cardiovascular, respiratory, and other physiological changes that represent alterations of the HPA axis and the direction of causality of such associations.
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Problem features of the space environment will need to be included in the stimulus array being tested (e.g., confined environment, small-crew interactions)
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The development of computer analytic methods for on-line measurement of facial expression from video observation is an important goal for instrumentation development. This could be used in conjunction with voice frequency analysis (employed in the Russian space program)
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, and eventually, if the situation is not resolved, depleted (exhaustion) .66 Among highly competent and self-confident people such as space crews, resistance is likely to be effective and last a long time.
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Understanding and predicting beneficial and enjoyable characteristics of the environment, as well as successful coping, adaptation, and positive long-term outcomes among crew members, are just as important and informative as studying environmental stressors and human failure, maladaptation, and postflight problems.68 Such information is essential to the development of effective countermeasures during all phases of a mission. Cognition and Perception Although the perceptual changes associated with microgravity and disruption of circadian rhythms have been thoroughly examined in both in-flight and ground-based studies, there is very little systematic knowledge of changes in cognition and perception associated with long-duration spaceflight.
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, perception of the risks associated with the physical environment, loneliness and separation from family and friends, receipt of unexpected and distressing news, and interpersonal conflicts.7~-73 However, the specific contribution of each of these factors to the expression of specific emotions in specific individuals remains to be determined. A greater understanding of individual, social, and environmental predictors of negative emotions in long-duration missions is essential to the development of effective countermeasures.
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. In the next decade, research on human behavior in space should focus on the extent to which personality characteristics vary among astronaut personnel and whether these variations are associated with differences in behavior and performance preflight, in flight, and postflight.
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and Russian crowed space missions have included a variety of psychoactive medications: anxiolytics such as diazopam, sleeping pills such as flurazopam, antipsychotics such as haloperidol, and intramuscular promethazine for space motion sickness.87 Seventy-eight percent of shuttle crew members have taken medications in space, primarily for space motion sickness, headache, sleeplessness, and back pain.88 Physiological changes due to spaceflight may change the pharmacokinetic behavior of psychoactive drugs thus influencing their dosage and route of administration 89 For example, microgravity can ~ , ~ ~ increase blood flow in the upper part of the body and decrease it in the lower part. Thus, an intramuscular injection to the arm rather than the hip might alter the bioavailability of the medication.
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Research on astronaut personnel and individuals in analogue settings has identified a number of characteristics as predictors of successful performance in extreme, isolated environments. McFadden and colleagues found that expressive traits are significant predictors of astronaut effectiveness in interpersonal domains.93 A similar study by Rose and colleagues found that astronaut professional effectiveness was associated with high negative expressivity and "communion" (subordinate and gullible)
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The elects of individual characteristics of crew members on cognitive, psychophysiological, and Affective measures of behavior and performance: · The relationship between self-reports and external (i.e., performance-related, physiological) symptoms of stress; · The use of specific coping strategies and behavioral and physiological indicators of coping stage transitions during long-duration missions;
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Finally, cultural and language differences may affect space crews by producing intracrew friction and ineffective responses to danger, both of which can have a negative impact on the success of a mission. Reports from long-duration Russian space missions involving people from other nations have
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The effects of periods of social monotony on space crews should be addressed further in order to maintain morale, provide meaningful use of leisure time, and prevent negative consequences of low stimulation (e.g., asthenia, crew member withdrawal)
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The extent to which crew cohesion is influenced by the characteristics of individual members may also vary with mission duration such that cohesion may be enhanced by homogeneous features of crew composition early in the mission and heterogeneous features later on. The impact of homogeneity or heterogeneity and mission phase on crew cohesion should be studied empirically under actual spaceflight conditions.
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When forming space crews, Russian psychologists take into account the similarity of values among potential crew members; their social and motivational attitudes toward the job; the presence of complementary personality and character traits and cognitive styles; and the ability to learn rapidly and efficiently. One of the compatibility testing methods used by
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Formal testing procedures have correctly predicted crew incompatibilities during the Ben Franklin submersible simulator mission,l40 and interpersonally oriented psychological tests, such as the FIRO-B and sociometric questionnaires, have shown promise in crew selection in several simulation studies.l4l~l46 Training In the future, more didactic and experiential training similar to the programs involving participants in the SMSP should be provided concerning the influences of specific sociocultural factors (e.g., personality, compatibility, gender bias, cultural and language differences, career motivation) in order to minimize crew tension, sustain cohesion, and prevent subgrouping and scapegoating.
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2. More didactic and experiential training should be provided to crews on the following: · Specific socioculturalfactors in order to minimize crew tension, sustain cohesion, and prevent subgrouping and scapegoating; · Preflight activities involving team building and conflict resolution; and
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on crew tension, cohesion, and performance during the mission; 2. Factors affecting ground-crew interactions, including the impact of crew tension and unhappiness on crew-ground communication; impact of ground-crew communication on crew cohesion and task performance; and conditions that affect the distribution of authority, decision making, and task assignments between space crews and members of ground control; and 3.
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Evidence from previous short-duration missions has pointed to the potentially adverse impacts of scheduling too many tasks within the time available. These impacts have included conflicts between astronauts and ground control personnel, refusal to perform assigned tasks, fatigue, sleep deprivation, a decline in cognitive performance, and an increase in negative affect.l69 On the other hand, evidence from long-duration missions and analogue environments suggests that a lack of sufficient amounts of meaningful and productive tasks can result in boredom, producing many of the same symptoms associated with overwork.l70 Individual and group performance may also be affected when disparities in workload occur among crew members, such that some are given too much to do and others are not given enough to do during a long-duration mission.
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For instance, the traditional organizational structure that separated space crews into "pilots" and "scientists" or "payload specialists" and the distribution of authority, decision making, and task assignments based on this distinction may have little relevance for the effective management of long-duration missions. Similarly, the conditions under which authority structures, decision-making processes, and task assignments result in interpersonal and crew-ground control conflicts during long-duration missions may be quite different from the conditions leading to conflict during short-duration missions.
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Pp. 107-178 in Human Behavior and Environment, Vol.
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1971. Human circadian rhythms in continuous darkness: Entrainment by social cues.
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1996. Psychological prophylaxis and treatments for space crews.
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99. Thagard, N., Lessons from Mir, presentation to the Panel on Human Behavior, Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, May 2, 1997, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
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139. Holland, A., NASA Operational Program, presentation to the Panel on Human Behavior, Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, May 1, 1997, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 140.
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159. Thagard, N., presentation to the Panel on Human Behavior, Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, May 2, 1997, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
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PART IV Research Priorities and Programmatic Issues
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