This report refers to a body of investigations directed toward the examination of autonomic nervous system responses to motion sickness. Heart rate, respiration rate, finger pulse volume, and basal skin resistance were measured on 127 men and women before, during, and after exposure to a nauseogenic rotating chair test. Significant changes in all autonomic responses were observed across the tests (p<.05). Significant differences in autonomic responses among groups divided according to motion sickness susceptibility were also observed (p<.05). Results suggest that the examination of autonomic responses as an objective indicator of motion sickness malaise is warranted and may contribute to the overall understanding of the syndrome.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. AbstractThe command and control vehicle (C2V) was developed to support U.S. Army tactical operation centers in heavy forces. The requirements for the C2V stipulate that it must support mobile operations and that it must support command and control (C2) from within the confines of the vehicle. However, in early testing, some human operators exhibited motion sickness during moving operations. As a result, the Human Research and Engineering Directorate of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, in cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Life Sciences Division, was directed to perform a study to quantify the incidence and severity of motion sickness and any associated performance decrement. The study would discriminate between motion effects in the C2V in parked, moving, and short halt in each seat in three seat configurations.Twenty-four soldiers were exposed to each of 12 seats (four seats in three vehicle configurations) for a 4-hour "cell." During a cell, subjects completed a motion sickness and mood scale and the Delta cognitive battery. Half the subjects were also instrumented to record physiological correlates of motion sickness. Each cell included an initial (parked) administration of the test batteries followed by two test batteries while moving and three test batteries during short halts.Fifty-five percent of the subjects reported an average motion sickness score, indicating moderate to severe symptoms. Symptoms were not mitigated by short halts. One subject was withdrawn from the study because of severe and persistent symptoms.Performance was significantly worse during moving operations than in parked, with a partial recovery during short halts. Performance degradation was comparable to blood alcohol equivalencies at or above 0.08% in 35% of the soldiers during movement and 22% during short halts.There was no significant difference between seat or vehicles in any of the measurements. CONTENTS

Studies have shown that autonomous mode behavior is one cause of aircraft fatalities due to pilot error. In such cases, the pilot is in a high state of psychological and physiological arousal and tends to focus on one problem, while ignoring more critical information. This study examined the effect of training in physiological self-recognition and regulation, as a means of improving crew cockpit performance. Seventeen pilots were assigned to the treatment and control groups matched for accumulated flight hours. The treatment group contained 4 pilots from HC-130 Hercules aircraft and 4 HH-65 Dolphin helicopter pilots; the control group contained 3 pilots of HC-130s and 6 helicopter pilots. During an initial flight, physiological data were recorded on each crewmember and an instructor pilot rated individual crew performance. Eight crewmembers were then taught to regulate their own physiological response levels using Autogenic-Feedback Training Exercise (AFTE). The remaining participants received no training. During a second flight, treatment participants showed significant improvement in performance (rated by the same instructor pilot as in pretests) while controls did not improve. The results indicate that AFTE management of high states of physiological arousal may improve pilot performance during emergency flying conditions.

These studies examined memory encoding to determine whether the mere exposure effect could be categorized as a form of conceptual or perceptual implicit priming and, if it was not conceptual or perceptual, whether cardiovascular psychophysiology could reveal its nature. Experiment 1 examined the effects of study phase level of processing on recognition, the mere exposure effect, and word identification implicit priming. Deep relative to shallow processing improved recognition but did not influence the mere exposure effect for nonwords or word identification implicit priming for words. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the effect of study-test changes in font and orientation, respectively, on the mere exposure effect and word identification implicit priming. Different study-test font and orientation reduced word identification implicit priming but had no influence on the mere exposure effect. Experiments 4 and 5 developed and used, respectively, a cardiovascular psychophysiological implicit priming paradigm to examine whether stimulus-specific cardiovascular reactivity at study predicted the mere exposure effect at test. Blood volume pulse change at study was significantly greater for nonwords that were later preferred than for nonwords that were not preferred at test. There was no difference in blood volume pulse change for words at study that were later either identified or not identified at test. Fluency effects, at encoding or retrieval, are an unlikely explanation for these behavioral and cardiovascular findings. The relation of blood volume pulse to affect suggests that an affective process that is not conceptual or perceptual contributes to the mere exposure effect.