Manzey D
DLR-Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, Department of Aviation and Space Psychology, Hamburg, Germany.
Aviat Space Environ Med. 2000 Sep;71(9 Suppl):A69-75.
Mental performance of astronauts during spaceflight may suffer from both direct effects of microgravity on perceptual, cognitive, and psychomotor processes, and unspecific stress effects on these functions due to high workload sleep disturbances, or the general burden of adapting to the extreme living conditions in space. Early detection of any signs of mental performance impairments seems to be essential for mission success and to prevent obvious performance decrements in critical mission tasks. One possible approach to this problem is to assess the astronaut's performance on specific screening tests repeatedly during a space mission and to compare the results with a self-referenced baseline established pre-flight. The selection of screening tests for this purpose should be guided by three different criteria: 1) their reliability; 2) their sensitivity (i.e., their power to reveal subtle mental performance changes induced by internal or external stressors during spaceflight); and 3) their diagnosticity (i.e., their capability to reveal the underlying processes that lead to these performance deficits). Based on a discussion of these theoretical issues, first attempts to monitor mental performance of astronauts during spaceflight by means of short-term laboratory tasks are reviewed. The results of these studies suggest that, in particular, perceptual-motor tasks (tracking) and tasks placing comparatively high demands on attentional processes (e.g., dual-tasks) represent sensitive monitoring measures. First studies on the diagnositicity of tracking performance decrements during spaceflight suggest that they reflect both microgravity-related changes in the sensory-motor system as well as unspecific stress-effects, with the former factor reflected primarily in tracking performance decrements during early adaptation to the microgravity environment.
宇航员在太空飞行期间的心理表现可能会受到微重力对感知、认知和心理运动过程的直接影响，以及由于高工作量、睡眠干扰或适应太空极端生活条件的总体负担而对这些功能产生的非特异性应激影响。尽早发现任何心理表现受损的迹象对于任务成功以及防止关键任务中的明显表现下降似乎至关重要。解决这个问题的一种可能方法是在太空任务期间反复评估宇航员在特定筛查测试中的表现，并将结果与飞行前建立的自我参照基线进行比较。为此目的选择筛查测试应遵循三个不同标准：1）测试的可靠性；2）测试的敏感性（即其揭示太空飞行期间内部或外部应激源引起的细微心理表现变化的能力）；3）测试的诊断性（即其揭示导致这些表现缺陷的潜在过程的能力）。基于对这些理论问题的讨论，回顾了首次尝试通过短期实验室任务监测宇航员在太空飞行期间心理表现的情况。这些研究结果表明，特别是感知运动任务（追踪）和对注意力过程要求相对较高的任务（例如双重任务）是敏感的监测指标。关于太空飞行期间追踪性能下降的诊断性的初步研究表明，它们既反映了感觉运动系统中与微重力相关的变化，也反映了非特异性应激效应，前一个因素主要反映在早期适应微重力环境期间的追踪性能下降中。
