Physiological monitoring of team and task stressors

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sending astronauts into space, especially on long-durations missions (e.g. three-year missions to Mars), entails enormousrisk. Threats include both physical dangers of radiation, bone loss and other consequences of weightlessness, and alsothose arising from interpersonal problems associated with extended life in a high-risk isolated and confined environment.Before undertaking long-duration missions, NASA seeks to develop technologies to monitor indicators of potentiallydebilitating stress at both the individual and team level so that countermeasures can be introduced to prevent furtherdeterioration. Doing so requires a better understanding of indicators of team health and performance. To that end, astudy of team problem solving in a simulation environment was undertaken to explore effects of team and task stress.Groups of four males (25-45 yrs) engaged in six dynamic computer-based Antarctic search and rescue missions over fourdays. Both task and team stressors were manipulated. Physiological responses (ECG, respiration rate and amplitude,SCL, EMG, and PPG); communication (voice and email); individual personality and subjective team dynamicsresponses were collected and related to task performance. Initial analyses found that physiological measures can be usedto identify transient stress, predict performance, and reflect subjective workload. Muscle tension and respiration were themost robust predictors. Not only the level of arousal but its variability during engagement in the task is important toconsider. In general, less variability was found to be associated with higher levels of performance. Individuals scoringhigh on specific personality characteristics responded differently to task stress.Keywords:Team stress; Physiological measures of stress; Team performance; Predictive performance models1. INTRODUCTIONSending humans into space or into battle is a hazardous undertaking. Mission success and survival of personnel dependon their ability, skill, training, and ability to work together as a crew. Deep space is an unforgiving environment. It willnot be possible to simply turn around and come home if a problem arises, nor will it be possible to bring in freshreinforcements or resources. The crew exploration vehicle must be self-sustaining for up to three years with its crew offour to eight astronauts