Manipulating Stress Responses during Spaceflight Training with Virtual Stressors

Virtual Reality Adaptive Training for Personalized Stress Inoculation

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate a personalized adaptive training program designed for stress prevention using graduated stress exposure.

BACKGROUND

Astronauts in the high-risk space mission environment are prone to performance-impairing stress responses, making preemptive stress inoculation essential for their training.

METHODS

This work developed an adaptive virtual reality-based system that adjusts environmental stressors based on real-time stress indicators to optimize training stress levels. Sixty-five healthy subjects underwent task training in one of three groups: skill-only (no stressors), fixed-graduated (prescheduled stressor changes), and adaptive. Psychological (subjective stress, task engagement, distress, worry, anxiety, and workload) and physiological (heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, and electrodermal activity) responses were measured.

RESULTS

The adaptive condition showed a significant decrease in heart rate and a decreasing trend in heart rate variability ratio, with no changes in the other training conditions. Distress showed a decreasing trend for the graduated and adaptive conditions. Task engagement showed a significant increase for adaptive and a significant decrease for the graduated condition. All training conditions showed a significant decrease in worry and anxiety and a significant increase in the other heart rate variability metrics.

CONCLUSION

Although all training conditions mitigated some stress, the preponderance of trial effects for the adaptive condition supports that it is more successful at decreasing stress.

APPLICATION

The integration of real-time personalized stress exposure within a VR-based training program not only prepares individuals for high-stress situations by preemptively mitigating stress but also customizes stressor levels to the crew member's current state, potentially enhancing resilience to future stressors.

Enhancing Operational Police Training in High Stress Situations with Virtual Reality: Experiences, Tools and Guidelines

Virtual Reality (VR) provides great opportunities for police officers to train decision-making and acting (DMA) in cognitively demanding and stressful situations. This paper presents a summary of findings from a three-year project, including requirements collected from experienced police trainers and industry experts, and quantitative and qualitative results of human factor studies and field trials. Findings include advantages of VR training such as the possibility to safely train high-risk situations in controllable and reproducible training environments, include a variety of avatars that would be difficult to use in real-life training (e.g., vulnerable populations or animals) and handle dangerous equipment (e.g., explosives) but also highlight challenges such as tracking, locomotion and intelligent virtual agents. The importance of strong alignment between training didactics and technical possibilities is highlighted and potential solutions presented. Furthermore training outcomes are transferable to real-world police duties and may apply to other domains that would benefit from simulation-based training.

Research Directions of Applied Cognitive Sciences

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of investigation of the mind and intelligence [...]