Good communication within a group or between groups is essential to the successful completion of a mission. This holds true for spaceflight; crew members must be able to have effective communication with each other and with flight controllers on Earth. Dr. Joseph Brady’s research project is seeking to understand the risk factors involved in intra- and inter-group communications and to develop countermeasures. Brady is using a multi-person simulation in computer-generated environments as an experimental test bed for modeling communication and performance within and between space-dwelling and Earth-based groups.
Overview
Psychosocial Performance Factors in Space-Dwelling Groups
Principal Investigator:
Peter G. Roma, Ph.D.
Organization:
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Technical Summary
Original Aims
This project focuses on the development of an experimental test bed for modeling performance effectiveness and psychosocial adaptation in support of exploratory spaceflight missions beyond Earth's atmosphere. The physical, hardware, and software environment which serves as the experimental platform is referred to as the Planetary Exploration Simulation (PES), and provides an automated means for analyzing space crew performance as well as monitoring electronically the interactive effects of simulated communication modality constraints, mission management systems, and other stressful conditions. Within this context, the objectives of this project are to provide risk assessment and countermeasure evaluation of the following fundamental behavioral interaction operations that will most likely affect crew performance effectiveness and psychosocial adaptation:
Recent studies on “bounded autonomy” add experimental evidence to the empirical database by assessing crew performance effectiveness under rigid, schedule-based management of crew activities by Mission Control versus more flexible, autonomous self-managed activities. Under autonomous missions, crew performance improved and negative psychosocial adaptation self-report measures decreased; autonomous missions also produced decreased linguistic expressions of negative emotion and increased expressions of social processes and achievement. In addition, physiological stress markers were lower during autonomous missions. In a follow-up study, the psychosocial and performance effects of autonomy were robust to communications constraints despite a physiological stress reaction to the unexpected loss of audio and text-messaging abilities. Recently completed follow-up studies further support the performance and psychosocial benefits of autonomy assessed in longer-duration, 12-hour mission simulations conducted during different phases of the 24-hour circadian cycle (Early: 9 a.m. –9 p.m. vs. Late: 9 p.m. – 9 a.m.). As with previous work, crew performance was higher and physiological stress reactivity lower under autonomous conditions; however, overnight workloads produced significant decrements in individual performances that included reaction-time deficits, attentional lapses, psychosocial communication reductions, and decreases in voluntary cooperation. Importantly, despite these decrements, crew performance efficiency remained normal. Lapses in individual performances thus appeared to be compensated for in the overall crew performance, indicating the utility of multi-person crews as a countermeasure to individual performance lapses under heavy workload and circadian disruption. Nevertheless, the dramatic decrease in psychosocial communication during late missions could be an early warning sign of crew fragmentation that could hinder cohesion and adaptability to malfunctions, environmental disruptions, or schedule demands.
The newly-developed Team Performance Task (TPT) has moved from initial software development into an early application phase as a simple, rapid, and objective measure of voluntary cooperative behavior as an assay of group cohesion. Extensive laboratory tests have established the basic parameters and novel behavioral economic analysis methods for TPT data, and preliminary TPT tests in intact work-groups show that the task is easily learned and remarkably sensitive to task duration, external incentives, and stable inter-crew differences. Additional larger-scale validation efforts are ongoing both domestically and with ESA-supported international partners, and reveal the TPT’s ability to objectively discriminate between 3-person groups composed of friends versus groups composed of strangers.
Plans for the final year of this grant cycle include completing the TPT “Familiar-Stranger” validation study, assessing the circadian rhythm of cohesion, and tracking the development of cohesion over time in newly formed PES simulation crews with embedded TPT sessions throughout training and repeated missions over several months.
This project focuses on the development of an experimental test bed for modeling performance effectiveness and psychosocial adaptation in support of exploratory spaceflight missions beyond Earth's atmosphere. The physical, hardware, and software environment which serves as the experimental platform is referred to as the Planetary Exploration Simulation (PES), and provides an automated means for analyzing space crew performance as well as monitoring electronically the interactive effects of simulated communication modality constraints, mission management systems, and other stressful conditions. Within this context, the objectives of this project are to provide risk assessment and countermeasure evaluation of the following fundamental behavioral interaction operations that will most likely affect crew performance effectiveness and psychosocial adaptation:
- The structure and function of communication channels within and between simulated space-dwelling and Earth-based groups.
- Factors associated with variations in the behavioral management systems between space-dwelling and Earth-based groups.
- Factors associated with variations in workloads, stressful time pressure and conflict conditions.
- Behavioral and psychosocial interaction systems between spaceflight crews and Earth-centered mission support operations that are most likely to influence individual and group performance during long-duration missions.
Recent studies on “bounded autonomy” add experimental evidence to the empirical database by assessing crew performance effectiveness under rigid, schedule-based management of crew activities by Mission Control versus more flexible, autonomous self-managed activities. Under autonomous missions, crew performance improved and negative psychosocial adaptation self-report measures decreased; autonomous missions also produced decreased linguistic expressions of negative emotion and increased expressions of social processes and achievement. In addition, physiological stress markers were lower during autonomous missions. In a follow-up study, the psychosocial and performance effects of autonomy were robust to communications constraints despite a physiological stress reaction to the unexpected loss of audio and text-messaging abilities. Recently completed follow-up studies further support the performance and psychosocial benefits of autonomy assessed in longer-duration, 12-hour mission simulations conducted during different phases of the 24-hour circadian cycle (Early: 9 a.m. –9 p.m. vs. Late: 9 p.m. – 9 a.m.). As with previous work, crew performance was higher and physiological stress reactivity lower under autonomous conditions; however, overnight workloads produced significant decrements in individual performances that included reaction-time deficits, attentional lapses, psychosocial communication reductions, and decreases in voluntary cooperation. Importantly, despite these decrements, crew performance efficiency remained normal. Lapses in individual performances thus appeared to be compensated for in the overall crew performance, indicating the utility of multi-person crews as a countermeasure to individual performance lapses under heavy workload and circadian disruption. Nevertheless, the dramatic decrease in psychosocial communication during late missions could be an early warning sign of crew fragmentation that could hinder cohesion and adaptability to malfunctions, environmental disruptions, or schedule demands.
The newly-developed Team Performance Task (TPT) has moved from initial software development into an early application phase as a simple, rapid, and objective measure of voluntary cooperative behavior as an assay of group cohesion. Extensive laboratory tests have established the basic parameters and novel behavioral economic analysis methods for TPT data, and preliminary TPT tests in intact work-groups show that the task is easily learned and remarkably sensitive to task duration, external incentives, and stable inter-crew differences. Additional larger-scale validation efforts are ongoing both domestically and with ESA-supported international partners, and reveal the TPT’s ability to objectively discriminate between 3-person groups composed of friends versus groups composed of strangers.
Plans for the final year of this grant cycle include completing the TPT “Familiar-Stranger” validation study, assessing the circadian rhythm of cohesion, and tracking the development of cohesion over time in newly formed PES simulation crews with embedded TPT sessions throughout training and repeated missions over several months.
Earth Applications
The methodological development associated with this NSBRI -funded research has provided a test bed for modeling performance effectiveness and psychosocial adaptation in computer-generated distributed interactive multi-person environments. This experimental setting provides an automated means for setting the task performance context as well as for monitoring electronically the interactive effects of communication modality constraints and other environmentally stressful conditions. Such a distributed interactive experimental analysis can characterize the extent to which variations in the structure and function of communication channels within and between individuals and groups affect the ability to accurately discern and respond to the realities and requirements of both operational and interpersonal transactions. The effects of environmentally stressful time constraints, appetitive and aversive characteristics of programmed incentive conditions, workload conditions, and management system conditions can be analyzed experimentally in the context of such distributed interactive environments.
Research conducted within the context of this distributed interactive simulation model can provide the basis for developing effective patterns of communication and problem solving strategies as well as a range of training procedures to enhance problem solving effectiveness. This projects research on improving ways to assess, train and manage small team performance effectiveness under hazardous and stressful conditions is relevant to transportation agencies, military forces and first responders. The Earth benefits to be derived from applications of this research will extend to the small operational group selection and training process as well as the management of stressful interactions and the maintenance of group cohesion and productivity. Not only can the outcome of these studies be expected to have an important impact on safety and the quality of life in many Earth-based applied settings, but also larger societal units will ultimately benefit from the resulting conceptual and methodological advances that effectively promote social and ecological stability while concurrently enhancing an education and training technology that assures effective communication of an expanded generalizeable knowledge base.
In addition, new development of the TPT group cohesion assessment tool can provide an effective and validated measure of behaviors necessary for effective team performance and productive social relationships of considerable value to the non-astronaut populations (e.g., in military and law enforcement agencies, emergency/first responder crews, medical/surgical teams, athletic teams, and business organizations where communication, coordination, and cooperation are critical for success), as well as in clinical settings as a standardized assessment of social function in populations with neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by social deficits (e.g., schizophrenia, Autism spectrum, antisocial personality) to elucidate the underlying mechanisms mediating socially-relevant symptoms, test the efficacy of potential treatments, and document individual improvement over time while under treatment.
This project's funding ended in 2012