title: Confinement has no effect on visual space perception: The results of the Mars-500 experiment.
abstract: People confined to a closed space live in a visual environment that differs from a natural open-space environment in several respects. The view is restricted to no more than a few meters, and nearby objects cannot be perceived relative to the position of a horizon. Thus, one might expect to find changes in visual space perception as a consequence of the prolonged experience of confinement. The subjects in our experimental study were participants of the Mars-500 project and spent nearly a year and a half isolated from the outside world during a simulated mission to Mars. The participants were presented with a battery of computer-based psychophysical tests examining their performance on various 3-D perception tasks, and we monitored changes in their perceptual performance throughout their confinement. Contrary to our expectations, no serious effect of the confinement on the crewmembers' 3-D perception was observed in any experiment. Several interpretations of these findings are discussed, including the possibilities that (1) the crewmembers' 3-D perception really did not change significantly, (2) changes in 3-D perception were manifested in the precision rather than the accuracy of perceptual judgments, and/or (3) the experimental conditions and the group sample were problematic.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Veveří 97, 60200, Brno, Czech Republic, sikl@psu.cas.cz.
authors.forename: Radovan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sikl
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Simeček
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D018480:Astronauts / Q000523:psychology*; D004215:Distance Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006798:Housing / Q000145:classification; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D018535:Mars; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012934:Social Isolation / Q000523:psychology*; D013026:Space Flight; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000503:physiopathology*