Stress Resilience Assessment Based on Physiological Features in Selection of Air Traffic Controllers

Stress resilience is recognized as an important occupational prerequisite for air traffic controllers (ATCs). A system for input/output multimodal stress resilience assessment based on physiological features has been developed and applied in the ATC selection process on 40 ATC candidates, as well as on 40 age/sex-matched control subjects. The input stimulation paradigm includes acoustic startle stimuli and their prepulse and fear-potentiated modulations, airblasts, and semantically relevant aversive images and sounds. The output physiological features include resting heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, cardiac allostasis, electromyogram- and electrodermal activity-based acoustic startle response features, like startle reactivity and startle habituation, and acoustic startle modulation-related features, like fear-potentiated startle, prepulse inhibition of the startle response, and discrimination of startle responses in danger versus safety experimental conditions. Variability of each feature is assessed and illustrated in 8-D physiological resilience space. Statistically significant differences (p <; 0.05) between the two groups have been obtained for the three most relevant of eight applied features; specifically, ATC candidates exhibited significantly higher resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia, lower startle reactivity, and more pronounced cardiac allostasis than the control group. The observed feature variability justifies future research efforts toward augmenting the traditional ATC selection process with the presented stress resilience assessment approach. The proposed research paradigm can be also applied in selection processes of similarly stressful occupations such as first responders, airline/military pilots, military personnel, among others.