Do Advanced Spatial Strategies Depend on the Number of Flight Hours? The Case of Military Pilots.

BACKGROUND: Military pilots show advanced visuospatial skills. Previous studies demonstrate that they are better at mentally rotating a target, taking different perspectives, estimating distances and planning travel and have a topographic memory. Here, we compared navigational cognitive styles between military pilots and people without flight experience. Pilots were expected to be more survey-style users than nonpilots, showing more advanced navigational strategies. METHOD: A total of 106 military jet pilots from the Italian Air Force and 92 nonpilots from the general population matched for education with the pilots were enrolled to investigate group differences in navigational styles. The participants were asked to perform a reduced version of the Spatial Cognitive Style Test (SCST), consisting of six tasks that allow us to distinguish individuals in terms of landmark (people orient themselves by using a figurative memory for environmental objects), route (people use an egocentric representation of the space) and survey (people have a map-like representation of the space) user styles. RESULTS: In line with our hypothesis, military pilots mainly adopt the survey style, whereas nonpilots mainly adopt the route style. In addition, pilots outperformed nonpilots in both the 3D Rotation Task and Map Description Task. CONCLUSIONS: Military flight expertise influences some aspects of spatial ability, leading to enhanced human navigation. However, it must be considered that they are a population whose navigational skills were already high at the time of selection at the academy before formal training began.

Spatial Orientation and Directional Judgments in Pilots vs. Nonpilots.

BACKGROUND: Reading a map requires the ability to judge one's position in a large-scale space from information presented in a small-scale representation. Individuals are more accurate and faster in making judgments when the "up" direction on the map is the same as the "forward" direction of the environment, which is when a map is aligned with the perspective of the spatial layout they have learned (alignment effect). The aim of this study was to explore whether military pilots, who have high spatial abilities, would not show the alignment effect compared with nonpilots. METHODS: Recruited were 20 military pilots and 20 nonpilots. Mean flight hours were 418.75. Nonpilots without flight experience were matched for age and education with pilots. Subjects were asked to learn a map and to perform directional judgments to verify whether the alignment effect was present considering absolute angular errors. RESULTS: An ANOVA for mixed designs on absolute angular errors revealed a main "group" effect: pilots performed better than nonpilots (pilots: M = 22.60 ± 5.57; nonpilots: M = 82.59 ± 5.56). A main "directional judgments" effect was also observed: aligned judgements were easier than contra-aligned judgements (aligned, M = 9.277 ± 0.938; contra-aligned, M = 11.004 ± 0.805). ANOVA showed a significant "group × directional judgments" interaction: post hoc comparison showed that contra-aligned were more difficult than aligned judgments for nonpilots. DISCUSSION: High visuo-spatial abilities preserved pilots from having alignment effect bias. They performed directional judgments equally well, being less influenced by the increased cognitive effort requested by the changing perspective.Verde P, Angelino G, Piccolo F, Carrozzo P, Bottiglieri A, Lugli L, Piccardi L, Nori R. Spatial orientation and directional judgments in pilots vs. nonpilots. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2018; 89(10):857-862.

Effect of professional expertise and exposure to everyday life decision-making on moral choices.

Moral sense is defined as a feeling of fairness or unfairness of an action that knowingly causes harm to people other than the subject. It is crucial in determining human behavior and becomes pivotal in operational environments. Here we assessed whether professional daily life experience in an operational environment affects moral judgment by asking 41 military pilots of the Italian Air Force (P) and 69 controls (C) to solve 40 moral dilemmas. We found that P gave more morally acceptable utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. Interestingly, men and women in P equally accepted utilitarian resolutions of moral dilemmas, whereas in C women were less prone than men to accept utilitarian responses. We conclude that professional daily life experience of P, in an operational environment, affects moral judgment and mitigates gender predisposition towards moral dilemmas.

Neck pain in F-16 vs. Typhoon fighter pilots.

INTRODUCTION: In jet pilots, the neck is stressed by dynamic loading and there is growing concern about possible neck damage in pilots of new agile aircraft. Jet pilots often report neck pain after flight so intense that their operational capability may be affected. However, there is no clear evidence of structural damage related to the operational exposure. METHODS: We compared 35 F-16 pilots with 35 age-matched Eurofighter Typhoon pilots. All subjects completed an anonymous questionnaire on their flight activity and neck pain. RESULTS: The incidence of neck pain in the F-16 group was 48.6% compared with 5.7% of the Typhoon group, significantly higher. In F-16 pilots, there was a significant association between neck pain and age over 30 yr, total flight hours, and flight hours exceeding 600. DISCUSSION: Our findings suggest that the risk of neck pain after flight is higher among F-16 pilots compared with Typhoon pilots. This could be due to several reasons, including the backward reclined seat of the F-16, which exposes the neck to the load in an unfavorable posture while moving the head during maneuvers at sustained high-G.