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Performance of a simple aiming task in hypergravity: II. detailed response characteristics
O Bock1, K E Arnold, B S Cheung
1Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science, North York, Canada.
Background:
Literature proposes three hypotheses for impaired movement execution in hyper-G. The present study attempted to discriminate between these hypotheses by comparing kinematic characteristics and final accuracy of pointing movements in different gravity levels.
Method:
Subjects pointed without seeing their hand at targets presented before, during and after exposure to hyper-G.
Results:
After factoring out movement amplitude, peak vertical velocity and the skewness of velocity profiles tended to increase, while movement duration tended to decrease with increasing G-level. Further, final response position was slightly less modulated by target position in hyper-G than in normal-G.
Conclusion:
Although not all findings reached statistical significance, the observed pattern of results corroborates the hypothesis (2) that the motor system re-interprets hyper-G as increased arm weight.