Influence of a Three-Month Mixed Reality Training on Gait Speed and Cognitive Functions in Adults with Intellectual Disability: A Pilot Study.

People with intellectual disability (ID) are often subject to motor impairments such as altered gait. As gait is a task involving motor and perceptive dimensions, perceptual-motor training is an efficient rehabilitation approach to reduce the risk of falls which grows with age. Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality are recent tools which enable interaction with 3D elements at different levels of immersion and interaction. In view of the countless possibilities that this opens, their use for therapeutic purposes is constantly increasing. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence a mixed reality activity could have on motor and cognitive abilities in eighteen adults with intellectual disability. For three months, once a week, they had around 20 min to pop virtual balloons with a finger using a Microsoft HoloLens2® head-mounted mixed-reality device. Motor skills were assessed through gait analysis and cognitive abilities were measured with the Montréal Cognitive Assessment. Both walking speed and cognitive score increased after training. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that mixed reality holds potential to get used for therapeutic purposes in adults with ID.

Comprehensive assessment of physiological responses in women during the ESA dry immersion VIVALDI microgravity simulation.

Astronauts in microgravity experience multi-system deconditioning, impacting their inflight efficiency and inducing dysfunctions upon return to Earth gravity. To fill the sex gap of knowledge in the health impact of spaceflights, we simulate microgravity with a 5-day dry immersion in 18 healthy women (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05043974). Here we show that dry immersion rapidly induces a sedentarily-like metabolism shift mimicking the beginning of a metabolic syndrome with a drop in glucose tolerance, an increase in the atherogenic index of plasma, and an impaired lipid profile. Bone remodeling markers suggest a decreased bone formation coupled with an increased bone resorption. Fluid shifts and muscular unloading participate to a marked cardiovascular and sensorimotor deconditioning with decreased orthostatic tolerance, aerobic capacity, and postural balance. Collected datasets provide a comprehensive multi-systemic assessment of dry immersion effects in women and pave the way for future sex-based evaluations of countermeasures.

Human behavior and performance in deep space exploration: next challenges and research gaps.

As space exploration missions move from low orbit to distant destinations, including the Moon and Mars, new psychological, behavioral, and team challenges will arise. This manuscript represents an up-to-date white paper developed by European experts invited by the European Space Agency (ESA), mapping unfilled research gaps related to the psychology of space exploration, considering the incoming human missions, and accounting for the available scientific knowledge. ESA created the expert team and facilitated its work, but the team was completely independent in terms of contents. The white paper considers basic issues of adaptation, pre-, during-, and post-mission experiences, and possible countermeasures to be developed and tested. The resulting integrative map provides a guide for researchers that are interested in conducting research in the support of future space exploration endeavors.

Emotions and performance in rugby.

PURPOSE: This study investigated emotion-performance relationships in rugby union. We identified which emotions rugby players experienced and the extent to which these emotions were associated with performance, considering how emotions unfold over the course of a game, and whether the game was played at home or away. METHODS: Data were gathered from 22 professional male rugby union players using auto-confrontation interviews to help identify situations within games when players experienced intense emotions. We assessed the intensity of emotions experienced before each discrete performance and therefore could assess the emotion-performance relationship within a competition. RESULTS: Players identified experiencing intense emotions at 189 time-points. Experts in rugby union rated the quality of each performance at these 189 time-points on a visual analog scale. A Linear Mixed Effects model to investigate emotion-performance relationships found additive effects of game location, game time, and emotions on individual performance. CONCLUSION: Results showed 7 different pre-performance emotions, with high anxiety and anger associating with poor performance. Future research should continue to investigate emotion-performance relationships during performance using video-assisted recall and use a measure of performance that has face validity for players and coaches alike.

Group-Based Emotions: Evidence for Emotion-Performance Relationships in Team Sports.

PURPOSE: In team sports, players have to manage personal interests and group goals, emphasizing intricacies between personal and social identities. The focus of this article was to examine the effect of identity mechanisms on appraisal processes, based on the following research question: Does the level of self-abstraction (low [personal identity] versus high [social identity]) lead to group-based emotions and influence performances? METHOD: An experimental design was used in which the level of self-abstraction was manipulated through the induction of a self- versus a team-oriented goal. Thirty elite male rugby players (Mage = 19.06, SD = 0.78, randomly split) participated in a match reproducing conditions similar to those of official games. Individual and perceived team-level emotions and performance were measured 17 times during the match. RESULTS: Linear Mixed Effects models showed that a high level of self-abstraction: (a) led to more positive and less negative individual (variances explained: 52% and 46%) and perceived team-referent (variances explained: 57% and 40%) emotions; (b) reduced the correlation of team-referent emotions with individual ones; and (c) positively influenced team and individual performances (variances explained: 50% and 19%). Moreover, after controlling for potential effects of the level of self-abstraction, only positive team-referent emotions influenced performance. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to experimentally manipulate athletes' social identity to examine group-based emotions in sport. Challenging the usual intrapersonal approaches, these findings suggested that social identity and its association with team-referent emotions could be one of the key dimensions of emotion-performance relationships in team sports.

Personality traits of people attracted by parabolic flight.

BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that members of expeditions in extreme environments differed on the basis of personality factors (e.g., they were highly competitive, higher on Extraversion and Conscientiousness) compared to the control population. In order to identify individuals who are likely to participate in extreme environments, the aim of the present study using parabolic flights was to compare the personality traits of voluntary participants (VP) in a weightlessness experiment with those of the general population (GP) (French norms). METHODS: The personalities of 57 voluntary participants in a parabolic flights experiment were assessed using NEO-PI-R and Trait-Anxiety. RESULTS: Our results show significant differences with the general population: (1) in Trait-Anxiety (GP = 42.25 +/- 11.44 vs. VP = 34.56 +/- 6.24) and in 3 out of 5 personality domains (Neuroticism GP = 90.04 +/- 22.68 vs. VP = 78.70 +/- 17.44, +/- 18.87 vs. VP = 123.81 +/- 15.41, and Conscientiousness GP = 109.23 +/- 22.30 vs. VP = 124.47 + 19.03); and (2) in 14 out of 30 NEO-PI-R facets. DISCUSSION: These findings indicate a specific personality profile for voluntary participants in parabolic flights and confirm that participants attracted to extreme environments differ compared to the normative population.

Trait self-esteem and claimed self-handicapping motives in sports situations.

We examined the relationship between physical self-esteem and claimed self-handicapping among athletes by taking motives into consideration. In Study 1, 99 athletes were asked to report their tendency to engage in claimed self-handicapping for self-protective and self-enhancement motives (trait measures). Low self-esteem athletes reported a higher tendency to engage in claimed self-handicapping for these two motives compared with high self-esteem athletes. Neither low nor high self-esteem athletes reported a preference for one motive over the other. In Study 2, 107 athletes participated in a test that was ostensibly designed to assess high physical abilities - and thus to encourage self-handicapping for self-enhancement motives (success-meaningful condition) - or to assess low physical abilities, and thus to encourage self-handicapping for self-protective motives (failure-meaningful condition). Before starting the test, athletes were given the opportunity to claim handicaps that could impair their performance. Low self-esteem athletes claimed more handicaps than high self-esteem athletes in both conditions. Findings suggest that low physical self-esteem athletes engage more in claimed handicapping regardless of motives, relative to high physical self-esteem athletes.

Mixed-gender groups: coping strategies and factors of psychological adaptation in a polar environment.

The polar environment is often seen as a good analog for long-term space missions in terms of isolation and confinement. This paper focuses on the psychological adaptation of both the men and women in mixed-gender groups in the French polar station Dumont d'Urville. The first 49 expeditions to this station were composed of men only in groups of 25-30. In 2000, two women were included in the first mixed-gender wintering group, followed by five women in 2001. This study on coping strategies and psychological adaptation was included in an end-of-mission debriefing performed by a psychologist. Data were collected using a few quantitative tools and a semi-structured interview, and focused on adaptation to wintering, coping strategies, and information on interpersonal relationships. Including women in a wintering group seems to have had positive effects on the general climate of the group by reducing men's rude behavior, but it also seems to be an important stressor for both men and women when the females' average age is close to the males' because seduction behaviors appear and rivalry, frustration, and sexual harassment frequently result. The use of problem-oriented strategies helps women to adapt. There are strong arguments indicating that living in an isolated and confined environment magnifies the usual difficulties that arise in mixed-gender relationships. Difficulties may be magnified in space since the group size is smaller and the confinement more extreme. This implies the need for rigorous select-in criteria for both men and women, especially for relational criteria, and for group training after selection.