Using alcohol as a challenge the sensitivity was evaluated of behavioral tests from four performance domains (Visual Temporal Factors, Cognitive Performance, Psychomotor Tracking, Visual Spatial Acuity). The tests, predictive of a wide range of human abilities, were also predictive of a complex manual control task (a simulated Shuttle Landing task). The authors' expectation was that the more basic measures (eg spatial and temporal visual acuity, tracking) would show less disruption as a function of the alcohol challenge than the more complex tasks (reasoning, pattern comparison, spatial perception). Subjects were dosed to a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) above 0.10 and the authors repeated the four battery testing regime four additional times as they measured BAC's of the (descending) alcohol removal curve with an Alcosensor IV. Based on the correlations of these tests with the simulated Shuttle Landing task, normalized composite scores were developed for each of the four performance domains.
Abstract