Effects of Motion Sickness on Encoding and Retrieval Performance and on Psychophysiological Responses

Being able to perform under the influence of motion sickness is essential in operational and working environments where people are being exposed to real or apparent motion, e.g., on board ships and aircrafts or in simulators. Operators in high performance occupations need to devote significant cognitive attention to their tasks and when such tasks are executed in moving environments, either continuously or occasionally, cognitive performance in terms of memory capacity is indeed crucial. Research on how different cognitive abilities are affected by motion sickness is, however, sparse. Recent studies have reported decreased cognitive task performance [1,2] in motion sickness triggering environments. However, these studies did not specifically address the relationship between perceived motion sickness and cognitive performance. The impact of motion sickness on human performance has been studied with regards to psychomotor functions and over learned skills [3,4], and in novel situations requiring the use of short term memory [5,6]. Motion sickness impacted negatively on performing novel tasks and on verbal short term memory [6-9], whereas over learned skills often were managed despite being under the influence of motion sickness [3]. To our knowledge, no previous research has studied the effects of motion sickness on long term memory.