This experience was a NASA sponsored study mimicking a space mission which took place at the Institutes for Behavior Research in the Applied Behavioral Biology Unit in Baltimore, MD. To be accepted for participation, I first had to complete a shorter segue study, titled “Team Performance Task.” I was told I would be playing computer games against other people, but I’m fairly sure my actual opponents were really just computers. I believe the researchers were looking at my willingness to cooperate and share during a competitive task. I was paid $50 for a couple of hours for this initial study.
I assume I passed the audition because I was contacted a few weeks later and asked to participate in a long-term study. At the time, I was supporting myself with a number of part-time jobs including catering, bartending, and umpiring, so my schedule was flexible enough to allow me to be available for three hours on Friday mornings for 12 weeks and for two 12 hour sessions, one 9 am to 9 pm and the other 9 pm to 9 am. The longer sessions were near the end of the study and would happen on a Wednesday.
We participants were sorted into three person groups, such that we had not met either of our new teammates. We were assigned different roles and titles for our mock space mission. My teammates were Orbiter and Rover, and I was Lander. The other two in my group were women around my age.
After congregating in the common room at our weekly meeting times, we were separated into three rooms, each of which had a computer, joystick, and camera. We could see each other via our computer cameras, but we were able to communicate only via chat since none of us were magnificent lip readers. The Planetary Exploration Simulation (PES) consisted of Lander, a larger and slower vessel, and Rover, a small and quicker vessel, picking up rock samples on a section of a planet by using a joystick and its buttons. Lander and Rover would then send their samples to Orbiter, who would sort the samples by color, size, and shape. Each PES iteration would have a different color, size, and shape that was most valued, and the goal of the PES was to find the one target sample which had the highest value.
Orbiter would decipher which type of sample Lander and Rover should look for based on what values were given to each sample for that specific mission. Orbiter would receive the samples from Lander and Rover and place the samples into a decoder using a program on her computer, and the decoder would tell her the value of a sample. If a red, medium triangle had a value of 20 out of 100, Orbiter would convey to Lander and Rover that that particular combination of color, size, and shape was not very similar to the target sample we were trying to find. If a blue, small, circle had a value of 80 out of 100, Orbiter might tell us to look for a blue, small sample because the data she compiled told her other blue, small samples were highly valued, but circles were not. The type of sample we needed to find would change from mission to mission.
Another caveat of the missions was Orbiter ‘going out of orbit’ every 10 minutes for about 5 minutes, meaning Lander and Rover couldn’t communicate with Orbiter. During the time Orbiter was dark we couldn’t receive information about samples, but Orbiter was still able to analyze any samples we had given her before she went out of orbit. There was usually a mad scramble to get her everything we could find that might be valuable before she went out of orbit. When communication came back, we hoped she would have some pointed directions about which samples to look for. Sometimes the target sample was given to her right before we lost communication and we succeeded!
We had 20 minutes in each area to find the respective target sample. The overall goal for each three-hour session was to find the target sample for five out of the six areas of the planet. We were incentivized with an extra $20 every time we accomplished this feat.
Three times during the sessions—before beginning the mission, during, and right after—we would be asked to give a saliva sample into a small, clear plastic tube. This required a lot of spitting! On a side note, forcing yourself to yawn really helps to create saliva. The researchers were interested in understanding how our stress levels, as measured by cortisol, fluctuated throughout the mission. Would a bad interaction with a teammate or a failed mission cause stress levels to rise?
After each three-hour session we would answer a very detailed questionnaire about our interactions with the other team members. There were about 100 questions in this questionnaire, so every detail one can imagine about interacting with people was addressed. We were asked how we felt about our teammates, whether we had started hanging out with them outside of the study, whether a particular teammate made us feel a certain way, and so forth. I sometimes got annoyed with them during the missions when we wouldn’t reach our goal. I remember getting more frustrated and annoyed with one than the other. For the majority of the time, I got along with my teammates, but the extent of my contact outside of the study with them was one of them giving me a ride home after the all day session. We wanted to have lunch outside of the study one day, but it never materialized.
The overnight mission was intense and consisted of three of the three-hour sessions with some break time in between. The first leg was fine, but by the middle of the second leg we were falling asleep. The researchers, aka “Mission Control,” would wake us up via audio if they saw through video that we were dozing off. The rooms had motion-activated lights, and I remember the lights going out a few times because I hadn’t moved in a while. Mission Control had food for us to enjoy between the sessions. I don’t think I ever found Kraft Easy Mac as delicious as I did that night. We had to rinse our mouths thoroughly after we ate so our saliva samples wouldn’t contain food particles.
The day session was just as long as the overnight mission, but it was not as intense because we weren’t battling to stay awake. It was definitely a long day, and the repetitiveness of the task became monotonous. You would think getting paid to play a video game for 12 hours would be enthralling, but the simplicity of the game made the iterations become a little boring.
Overall, this study was an awesome experience. It was fun, and the study was designed very well. I really enjoyed the game play and felt very motivated to succeed in our missions. We were paid $20 per hour because we completed the entire program, and I made a little over $1,200 doing this study including the extra bonuses for successfully attaining the mission goals. I also got an awesome NASA Institutes for Behavior Resources mug that I still use.