Abstract
Previous research on cognitive deficits during shallow water immersion led to inconsistent results: some authors observed deficits at 5 m, but others only at depths well beyond 5 m. The present study evaluates whether this discrepancy could be related to different levels of difficulty. Forty-eight subjects participated in a mental rotation task and in a color-word task, both having multiple levels of difficulty. The two tasks were administered once 5 m below the water’s surface and once on dry land. Compared to land, subjects’ reaction time increased in 5 m depth when task difficulty was low, but it did not increase when task difficulty was high. Thus, performance deficits in 5 m depth were inversely related to task complexity. We interpret this counter-intuitive finding within the framework of a multiple-channel parallel processing model, with channels that are differentially sensitive to immersion. This model correctly predicts performance deficits on simple, but not on complex skills at smaller depths, and deficits on simple as well as complex skills at larger depths, in accordance with the present findings and data from literature.
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Notes
The rationale for using different body postures was that one of our cognitive tasks, mental rotation, might be affected by subjects’ body posture.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Dr. T. Dräger, Dr. S. Guardiera and Dr. A. Mierau for their support in developing a precursor version of our setup. We also would like to thank S. Dern, N. Elting, T. Horel, R. Redder, S. Scherhag and B. Schulze for their help in data acquisition, L. Geisen, T. Kesnerus and M. Drescher for software development, and M. Küsel, J. Geiermann, and H. Schink for technical support. Our work was supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on the behalf of the German Ministry for Research and Technology (grant 50WB0726). Responsibility for the contents rests with the authors.
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Dalecki, M., Bock, O. & Hoffmann, U. Inverse relationship between task complexity and performance deficit in 5 m water immersion. Exp Brain Res 227, 243–248 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3506-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3506-4