Perception of time in microgravity and hypergravity during parabolic flight

摘要

We explored the effect of gravity on the accuracy for estimating durations of 3.5, 7, and 14s. Experiments were performed on board an Airbus A310 during parabolic flights eliciting repeated exposures to short periods of 0, 1, and 1.8g. Two methods for obtaining duration estimates were used, reproduction and production of duration, in two conditions: a control counting condition and a concurrent reading condition. Simple reaction times were also measured to assess attention. The results showed that the temporal accuracies during the reproduction task in the concurrent reading condition were significantly underestimated in 0g compared with 1g. Reaction times were also longer in 0g. However, there was no difference in duration estimates in the production tasks. These results suggest that the temporal underestimation in 0g is caused by decreased selective attention and impaired retrieval of information in episodic memory.