POSTURAL AND PERFORMANCE CHANGES FOLLOWING EXPOSURES TO FLIGHT SIMULATORS

Flight simulators are cost-effective, safe, and flexible training tool s for aviators. However, their advantages may be offset by the occurre nce of motion sickness-like symptoms which have been reported during a nd following simulator training. Although symptoms have been well docu mented in simulators, their time course, causes, and implications for training are not yet fully understood. Tests of standing and walking s teadiness were administered along with cognitive and motor performance tests to Navy and Marine Corps aviators before and after their regula r simulator training, resulting in records of 726 pilot exposure obser vations. When exposed pilots were compared to a control group who did not fly in a simulator, statistically significant decrements in postur al equilibrium test scores were found for all of the moving base simul ators, but for only one of the three fixed-base simulators. The size o f these losses was approximately 15% of baseline. Cognitive and motor changes, while statistically significant, were complicated by learning effects in all groups for all tests. When compared to the control gro up, improvement in cognitive scores was always less in the simulator g roups, but greater improvement occurred in the simulator groups for mo tor speed scores, although this latter difference was small (<1% of ba seline). Further study of performance changes is recommended. In those simulators where significant effects occurred, the ataxia and the tim e-course of the disequilibrium should be followed.