Non-intrusive detection of psycho-social dimensions using sociolinguistics

Long duration space flights such as a two and a half year mission to Mars present many unique challenges to the behavioral health of astronauts. Factors such as social monotony, workload, a confined environment, sensory deprivation, and limited access to family and psychosocial support can affect crew welfare and task performance. NASA recognizes a “risk of performance decrements due to inadequate cooperation, coordination, communication, and psychosocial adaptation within a team;” reports from Mir revealed that conflicts between crew members have resulted in early termination of missions. Currently, flight crews and support staff have real time voice and video communications capabilities on the International Space Station to keep astronauts connected, and allow operations staff to monitor the crew´s well-being. However, communications for long duration missions will likely be limited and disrupted by time latencies. Crew workload may also prohibit crew members from providing the extensive self-reports that the Earth-bound support team needs to accurately access the crew´s psychological health. Further, the metrics of interest are difficult to obtain because some are inherently qualitative, while others may not be amendable to self-reports. We first describe an extensive review of psycho-social dimensions relevant to long duration space flight, their manifestations, and possible detection methods. We then describe a novel method of non-intrusive detection developed initially for application in the Empire Challenge military exercise in 2010. This system, called ADMIRE for Assessment of Discourse Media Indicators of Relative Esteem, leverages prior work in cultural and socio-linguistic theory to develop standardized, non-intrusive methods for data collection and knowledge extraction about factors salient to group psychosocial dynamics. Finally, we describe our approach to follow-up work applying ADMIRE to historical space flight data, as well as in - ngoing studies in space analog environments to identify potential changes in individual and team psycho-social factors before they lead to deficits in health and task performance.