Study on the Change of Spatial Attention for Pilots under Short-Term Exposure to Plateau Environment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change of spatial attention for airline pilots exposure to high altitude anoxia environment for several days and the improvement of cognitive function by diffusion type of oxygen supply during sleep. Twenty male volunteers aged between 25 and 35 were recruited. The first group of 10 participants were measured their spatial attention reaction time both in high and low perceptual load task after 1 hour entering the 3,600m altitude plateau and the same time of the second day, the third day and the fourth day. The second group of 10 participants was randomly divided into the oxygen group and the exposure group, and the same tasks as the first group were measured in the above 4 time point. The results showed that the reaction time of spatial attention was significantly slowed down when participant entering into the plateau. And then with the adaptation to the plateau environment in the short term, the spatial attention ability can be alleviated to some extent, but the interaction between time and perceptual load was significant (P<; 0.01). The response to low perceptual load was relieved more quickly, whereas, for high perceptual load, the recovery rate is slow. Moreover, the study also found that the use of oxygen during sleep through diffuse oxygen supply has a certain improvement effect on the recovery of attention perception especially to high perceptual load complex tasks under high altitude anoxic environment.