Abstract
DURING the course of the Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition 1960–61 (ref. 1) the members sorted cards three times, a practice at a height not much above sea-level, and then two tests at 19,000 ft. Before the first test the average stay at 19,000 ft. had been 2 weeks, with an additional 6 weeks at 15,000 ft. Between the two tests an additional average of 9 weeks had been spent at 19,000 ft., plus 2 weeks at 15,000 ft. Adequate data were available for only three members of the expedition, whose ages ranged from 23 to 32 years. A comparable group of eleven research scientists from the Applied Psychology Research Unit was therefore collected, covering the same range of ages and academic experience. These men sorted cards with the same card-sorter three times in Cambridge, separated by the same average time-intervals. Table 1 shows that the number of delayed responses increased after acclimatization at 19,000 ft., whereas it fell slightly at about sea-level.
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GILL, M., POULTON, E., CARPENTER, A. et al. Falling Efficiency at Sorting Cards during Acclimatization at 19,000 ft.. Nature 203, 436 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/203436a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/203436a0
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