Responsible Center: NSBRI
Grant Monitor:
Center Contact:
Unique ID: 8941
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Solicitation / Funding Source: Directed Research
Grant/Contract No.: NCC 9-58-NBPF00008
Project Type: GROUND
Flight Program:
TechPort: No |
No. of Post Docs: 0
No. of PhD Candidates: 0
No. of Master's Candidates: 0
No. of Bachelor's Candidates: 1
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No. of PhD Degrees: 0
No. of Master's Degrees: 1
No. of Bachelor's Degrees: 0
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| Human Research Program Elements: |
(1) BHP:Behavioral Health & Performance (archival in 2017)
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| Human Research Program Risks: |
(1) Team:Risk of Performance and Behavioral Health Decrements Due to Inadequate Cooperation, Coordination, Communication, and Psychosocial Adaptation within a Team
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| Human Research Program Gaps: |
(1) Team-101:We need to understand the key threats, indicators, and evolution of the team throughout its life cycle for shifting autonomy and interface with automation in increasingly earth independent, long duration exploration missions.
(2) Team-102:We need to identify a set of quantifiable and validated measures, based on 5-12 key indicators of mission-relevant and identified spaceflight acceptable thresholds (or ranges) of team function, to effectively monitor and measure team health and performance of integrated NASA and commercial/private crews, during shifting autonomy in increasingly earth independent, long duration exploration missions.
(3) Team-103:We need to identify psychological and psychosocial factors, measures, and combinations thereof for use in selecting individuals and composing highly effective crews most likely to maintain team function during shifting autonomy in increasingly earth independent, long duration exploration missions.
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| Task Description: |
The Johns Hopkins team has developed a simple, rapid, objective, and language-free assay of small-group behavioral dynamics. In cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), the team is testing this behavioral science technology during two consecutive 10-month winter-over periods at Concordia Station in Antarctica as an isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environment similar to what Astronaut crews will experience during long-duration exploratory missions. The primary aims/objectives for the project are to (1) assess operational acceptability and logistical feasibility of an objective group-level behavioral assay in an ICE environment, (2) validate the behavioral assay data against naturally occurring behaviors and subjective opinions relevant to group cohesion, and (3) inform next-generation software development based on user and operator feedback. This research can be used to enhance selection, composition, and objective monitoring of high-performance teams in extreme environments where group cohesion is essential to mission success.
Despite the persistent efforts and remarkable professionalism of the Research MD responsible for carrying out all biomedical and behavioral research protocols, as of this submission (approximate half-way point of the winter), no behavioral or psychosocial data have been collected for our project or another group-level protocol from colleagues in the Netherlands. While this outcome may seem discouraging in terms of operational feasibility of team-level testing, note that in addition to our group-level testing, data collection for individual-level protocols (e.g., exercise, physiology, sleep) has been scattered and inconsistent at best both within and across individual Crew members. The acute cause for the poor data yield is a lack of Crew participation. Several potential underlying factors include crew participation and Concordia Station administrative support variability. Given the circumstances, the key findings thus far have been limited to our secondary goals for the project, specifically the broader issues of understanding the administrative and logistical processes of US-based Investigators conducting biobehavioral research at Concordia Station, the overarching importance of the relationship between Crew and management in operational settings, and empirically informing the return-on-investment analysis for prospective BHP research conducted at Concordia Station and other ICE space analog environments.
For the coming year, we plan to continue our attempts to collect team-level behavioral and psychosocial data throughout the remainder of the 2012 winter-over period. If successful, the resulting data would not likely elucidate the process of developing group cohesion over time; however, concomitant questionnaire data may still yield insight on the predictive validity of our behavioral technology. In addition, given the extraordinary circumstances of the 2012 winter-over campaign, we have been invited to return to Concordia for the 2013 campaign. |
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| Research Impact/Earth Benefits: |
The heart of the research is to develop a simple, rapid, and objective language-free behavioral assay of cooperative propensity at the group level to serve as a complement to subjective questionnaire-based assessments at the individual level. Once fully developed, this technology could be used to inform the Crew selection, composition, and even training processes through novel but heuristically informative quantitative modeling of individual- and team-level "social personality" profiles. However, this technology would not have to be limited to applications within human space exploration, as any organization that relies on cooperation in high-performance and multi-national teams including military, medical/healthcare, athletics, business, and other settings could employ this emerging technology. |
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