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.

Gender differences in navigational memory: pilots vs. nonpilots.

INTRODUCTION: The coding of space as near and far is not only determined by arm-reaching distance, but is also dependent on how the brain represents the extension of the body space. Recent reports suggest that the dissociation between reaching and navigational space is not limited to perception and action but also involves memory systems. It has been reported that gender differences emerged only in adverse learning conditions that required strong spatial ability. METHODS: In this study we investigated navigational versus reaching memory in air force pilots and a control group without flight experience. We took into account temporal duration (working memory and long-term memory) and focused on working memory, which is considered critical in the gender differences literature. RESULTS: We found no gender effects or flight hour effects in pilots but observed gender effects in working memory (but not in learning and delayed recall) in the nonpilot population (Women's mean = 5.33; SD= 0.90; Men's mean = 5.54; SD= 0.90). We also observed a difference between pilots and nonpilots in the maintenance of on-line reaching information: pilots (mean = 5.85; SD=0.76) were more efficient than nonpilots (mean = 5.21; SD=0.83) and managed this type of information similarly to that concerning navigational space. In the navigational learning phase they also showed better navigational memory (mean = 137.83; SD=5.81) than nonpilots (mean = 126.96; SD=15.81) and were significantly more proficient than the latter group. DISCUSSION: There is no gender difference in a population of pilots in terms of navigational abilities, while it emerges in a control group without flight experience. We found also that pilots performed better than nonpilots. This study suggests that once selected, male and female pilots do not differ from each other in visuo-spatial abilities and spatial navigation.