Additive Sensory Noise Effects on Operator Performance in a Lunar Landing Simulation.

INTRODUCTION: Adding noise to a system to improve a weak signal's detectability is known as stochastic resonance (SR). SR has been shown to improve sensory perception and cognitive performance in certain individuals, but it is unknown whether this performance improvement can translate to meaningful macrocognitive enhancements in performance for complex, operational tasks.OBJECTIVE: We investigated human operator performance in a lunar landing simulation while applying auditory white noise and/or noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation.METHODS: We measured performance (N = 16 subjects) while completing simulation trials in our Aerospace Research Simulator. Trials were completed with and without the influence of auditory white noise, noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation, and both simultaneously in a multimodal fashion. Performance was observed holistically and across subdimensions of the task, which included flight skill and perception. Subjective mental workload was collected after completing four trials in each treatment.RESULTS: We did not find broad operator improvement under the influence of noise, but a significant interaction was identified between subject and noise treatment, indicating that some subjects were impacted by additive noise. We also found significant interactions between subject and noise treatment in performance subdimensions of flight skill and perception. We found no significant main effects on mental workload.CONCLUSIONS: This study investigated the utility of using additive sensory noise to induce SR for complex tasks. While SR has been shown to improve aspects of performance, our results suggest additive noise does not yield operational performance changes for a broad population, but specific individuals may be affected.Sherman SO, Shen Y-Y, Gutierrez-Mendoza D, Schlittenhart M, Watson C, Clark TK, Anderson AP. Additive sensory noise effects on operator performance in a lunar landing simulation. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2023; 94(10):770-779.

Training augmentation using additive sensory noise in a lunar rover navigation task.

Background: The uncertain environments of future space missions means that astronauts will need to acquire new skills rapidly; thus, a non-invasive method to enhance learning of complex tasks is desirable. Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon where adding noise improves the throughput of a weak signal. SR has been shown to improve perception and cognitive performance in certain individuals. However, the learning of operational tasks and behavioral health effects of repeated noise exposure aimed to elicit SR are unknown. Objective: We evaluated the long-term impacts and acceptability of repeated auditory white noise (AWN) and/or noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) on operational learning and behavioral health. Methods: Subjects (n = 24) participated in a time longitudinal experiment to access learning and behavioral health. Subjects were assigned to one of our four treatments: sham, AWN (55 dB SPL), nGVS (0.5 mA), and their combination to create a multi-modal SR (MMSR) condition. To assess the effects of additive noise on learning, these treatments were administered continuously during a lunar rover simulation in virtual reality. To assess behavioral health, subjects completed daily, subjective questionnaires related to their mood, sleep, stress, and their perceived acceptance of noise stimulation. Results: We found that subjects learned the lunar rover task over time, as shown by significantly lower power required for the rover to complete traverses (p < 0.005) and increased object identification accuracy in the environment (p = 0.05), but this was not influenced by additive SR noise (p = 0.58). We found no influence of noise on mood or stress following stimulation (p > 0.09). We found marginally significant longitudinal effects of noise on behavioral health (p = 0.06) as measured by strain and sleep. We found slight differences in stimulation acceptability between treatment groups, and notably nGVS was found to be more distracting than sham (p = 0.006). Conclusion: Our results suggest that repeatedly administering sensory noise does not improve long-term operational learning performance or affect behavioral health. We also find that repetitive noise administration is acceptable in this context. While additive noise does not improve performance in this paradigm, if it were used for other contexts, it appears acceptable without negative longitudinal effects.