Investigating the role of flight phase and task difficulty on low-time pilot performance, gaze dynamics and subjective situation awareness during simulated flight.

Gaze behaviour has been used as a proxy for information processing capabilities that underlie complex skill performance in real-world domains such as aviation. These processes are highly influenced by task requirements, expertise and can provide insight into situation awareness (SA). Little research has been done to examine the extent to which gaze behaviour, task performance and SA are impacted by various task manipulations within the confines of early-stage skill development. Accordingly, the current study aimed to understand the impact of task difficulty on landing performance, gaze behaviour and SA across different phases of flight. Twenty-four low-time (<300 hours) pilots completed simulated landing scenarios under visual flight rules conditions. Traditional gaze metrics, entropybased metrics, and blink rate provided meaningful insight about the extent to which information processing is modulated by flight phase and task difficulty. The results also suggested that gaze behavior changes compensated for increased task demands and minimized the impact on task performance. Dynamic gaze analyses were shown to be a robust measure of task difficulty and pilot flight hours. Recommendations for the effective implementation of gaze behaviour metrics and their utility in examining information processing changes are discussed.

The effects of task difficulty on gaze behaviour during landing with visual flight rules in low-time pilots.

Eye movements have been used to examine the cognitive function of pilots and understand how information processing abilities impact performance. Traditional and advanced measures of gaze behaviour effectively reflect changes in cognitive load, situational awareness, and expert-novice differences. However, the extent to which gaze behaviour changes during the early stages of skill development has yet to be addressed. The current study investigated the impact of task difficulty on gaze behaviour in low-time pilots (N=18) while they completed simulated landing scenarios. An increase in task difficulty resulted in longer fixation of the runway, and a reduction in the stationary gaze entropy (gaze dispersion) and gaze transition entropy (sequence complexity). These findings suggest that pilots' gaze became less complex and more focused on fewer areas of interest when task difficulty increased. Additionally, a novel approach to identify and track instances when pilots restrict their attention outside the cockpit (i.e., gaze tunneling) was explored and shown to be sensitive to changes in task difficulty. Altogether, the gaze-related metrics used in the present study provide valuable information for assessing pilots gaze behaviour and help further understand how gaze contributes to better performance in low-time pilots.

Hangar talk survey: using stories as a naturalistic method of informing threat and error management training.

OBJECTIVE: The current study developed an online hangar talk survey (HTS) to solicit narratives describing challenging scenarios that professional pilots encountered during the hours-building phase of their career. BACKGROUND: The predicted pilot shortage will effectively reduce the minimum flying hours required for pilots to be hired at an airline, resulting in less opportunity to develop nontechnical skills naturalistically. To compensate, threat and error data from the hours-building phase of a pilot's career are required to inform training development. Pilots often share stories of such experiences, colloquially termed "hangar talk". METHOD: The HTS gathered 132 narrative descriptions of general aviation (GA) events from pilots along with the event's impact and whether the pilots would react differently if the scenario were encountered again. RESULTS: The distribution of threats reported by GA pilots was similar to that reported at the airline level. Logistic regression analysis revealed that decision-making errors were associated with recognition of the need to react differently in the future, and decision-making errors and proficiency errors were associated with greater perceived impact on skill development. CONCLUSION: The current HTS solicited an array of data similar to the findings of airline-based threat and error observations. Pilots perceive decision-making and proficiency errors as impactful on skill development. APPLICATION: An HTS can be used to gather naturalistic threat and error data and to create a database of operational stories that can be used to develop nontechnical training based on narrative thought.