Time-Interval Emphasis in an Aeronautical Dual-Task Context: A Countermeasure to Task Absorption.

OBJECTIVE: We tested a training method intended to prevent unsafe aeronautical behavior (i.e., too much time spent gazing inside the cockpit) induced by the modern cockpit, by teaching individuals to perform a task complementing the see-and-avoid mandatory safety task within a limited time interval. BACKGROUND: Aeronautical activities led crews to perform several tasks simultaneously in an ergonomic environment under constant change. See and avoid remains one of the main safety tasks during visual flight. However, modern cockpits induce absorption and impair performance of this safety task. Many laboratory studies showed the relevance of training methods for managing dual-task situations and estimating time intervals. METHOD: A specific virtual environment was developed to expose participants to a dual-task situation in which time-interval emphasis was provided in real time. Two types of emphasis training were tested: a permissive one that allowed participants to pursue the inside-cockpit task beyond the time limit and a nonpermissive one that did not. RESULTS: The best time-interval acquisition, with retention up to 24 hr later, was observed in the nonpermissive condition, but task performances immediately after the training sessions were equivalent across conditions. CONCLUSION: Time-emphasis training appears to be an efficient means of promoting absorption resistance while preserving task performance. Transferability of time-interval estimation skills has yet to be tested. APPLICATION: Most areas of application for absorption resistance (aviation, shipping, rail, road, etc.) could benefit from this type of training to manage multitask situations.

Eye position affects flight altitude in visual approach to landing independent of level of expertise of pilot.

The present study addresses the effect of the eye position in the cockpit on the flight altitude during the final approach to landing. Three groups of participants with different levels of expertise (novices, trainees, and certified pilots) were given a laptop with a flight simulator and they were asked to maintain a 3.71° glide slope while landing. Each participant performed 40 approaches to the runway. During 8 of the approaches, the point of view that the flight simulator used to compute the visual scene was slowly raised or lowered with 4 cm with respect to the cockpit, hence moving the projection of the visible part of the cockpit down or up in the visible scene in a hardly noticeable manner. The increases and decreases in the simulated eye height led to increases and decreases in the altitude of the approach trajectories, for all three groups of participants. On the basis of these results, it is argued that the eye position of pilots during visual approaches is a factor that contributes to the risk of black hole accidents.

The education of attention as explanation of variability of practice effects: learning the final approach phase in a flight simulator.

The present study reports two experiments in which a total of 20 participants without prior flight experience practiced the final approach phase in a fixed-base simulator. All participants received self-controlled concurrent feedback during 180 practice trials. Experiment 1 shows that participants learn more quickly under variable practice conditions than under constant practice conditions. This finding is attributed to the education of attention to the more useful informational variables: Variability of practice reduces the usefulness of initially used informational variables, which leads to a quicker change in variable use, and hence to a larger improvement in performance. In the practice phase of Experiment 2 variability was selectively applied to some experimental factors but not to others. Participants tended to converge toward the variables that were useful in the specific conditions that they encountered during practice. This indicates that an explanation for variability of practice effects in terms of the education of attention is a useful alternative to traditional explanations based on the notion of the generalized motor program and to explanations based on the notions of noise and local minima.

Self-controlled concurrent feedback and the education of attention towards perceptual invariants.

The present study investigates the effects of different types of concurrent feedback on the acquisition of perceptual-motor skills. Twenty participants walked through virtual corridors in which rhythmically opening and closing sliding doors were placed. The participants aimed to adjust their walking speed so as to cross the doors when the doors were close to their maximal aperture width. The highest level of performance was achieved by learners who practiced the task with unambiguous self-controlled concurrent feedback, which is to say, by learners who could request that feedback at wish. Practice with imposed rather than self-controlled feedback and practice without concurrent feedback were shown to be less effective. Finally, the way in which the self-controlled concurrent feedback was presented was also found to be of paramount importance; if the feedback is ambiguous, it may even prevent participants from learning the task. Clearly, unambiguous self-controlled feedback can give rise to higher levels of performance than other feedback conditions (compared to imposed schedule) but, depending on the way it is presented, the feedback can also prevent the participants from learning the task. In the discussion it is argued that unambiguous self-controlled concurrent feedback allows learners to more rapidly educate their attention towards more useful perceptual invariants and to calibrate the relation between perceptual invariants and action parameters.

Self-controlled concurrent feedback facilitates the learning of the final approach phase in a fixed-base flight simulator.

OBJECTIVE: This study (a) compares the effectiveness of different types of feedback for novices who learn to land a virtual aircraft in a fixed-base flight simulator and (b) analyzes the informational variables that learners come to use after practice. BACKGROUND: An extensive body of research exists concerning the informational variables that allow successful landing. In contrast, few studies have examined how the attention of pilots can be directed toward these sources of information. METHOD: In this study, 15 participants were asked to land a virtual Cessna 172 on 245 trials while trying to follow the glide-slope area as accurately as possible. Three groups of participants practiced under different feedback conditions: with self-controlled concurrent feedback (the self-controlled group), with imposed concurrent feedback (the yoked group), or without concurrent feedback (the control group). RESULTS: The self-controlled group outperformed the yoked group, which in turn outperformed the control group. Removing or manipulating specific sources of information during transfer tests had different effects for different individuals. However, removing the cockpit from the visual scene had a detrimental effect on the performance of the majority of the participants. CONCLUSION: Self-controlled concurrent feedback helps learners to more quickly attune to the informational variables that allow them to control the aircraft during the approach phase. APPLICATIONS: Knowledge concerning feedback schedules can be used for the design of optimal practice methods for student pilots, and knowledge about the informational variables used by expert performers has implications for the design of cockpits and runways that facilitate the detection of these variables.

Is the learning of goal-directed displacement effector-independent?

The present experiment was designed to investigate whether the learning of goal-directed locomotion is effector independent. To answer this question a bilateral transfer of learning paradigm was used. We wanted to find out whether learning can be transferred from a trained effector system to an untrained one. Sixteen participants were asked to proceed through virtual hallways, while walking on a treadmill or handling of a joystick, in order to cross a pair of oscillating doors. Participants received 1050 training trials on the specific effector system before being transferred to the untrained one. Results indicated a clear transfer from handling to walking and only a moderate transfer from walking to handling. This asymmetrical transfer provides partial support in favor of the effector independent hypothesis. Both the theoretical implications of this work and the possible mediating effect of calibration are discussed.

The learning of goal-directed locomotion: a perception-action perspective.

This study was designed to better understand the process underlying the learning of goal-directed locomotion. Subjects walked on a treadmill in a virtual reality setting and were asked to cross pairs of oscillating doors. The subjects behaviour was examined at the beginning of the learning process (pretest), after 350 trials (intermediate test), and after 700 trials (posttest). The data were analysed at three different levels, each representing a specific aspect of the global response: performance outcome, displacement kinematics, and current arrival condition. While some aspects of performance outcome suggested the presence of a ceiling effect in the intermediate test, both displacement kinematics and current arrival condition clearly highlighted continuous transformations of the control mechanism involved. The learning process is best described as (1) the establishing of a relationship between specific information and a movement parameter and (2) the optimization of this relationship. The optimization process is characterized by the further exploration of the available behavioural repertoire and by the refinement of the dialogue between information and movement.

Control of human locomotion under various task constraints.

The goal of this study was to identify the control mechanism used for locomotion pointing regulation under different external temporal constraints. Subjects ( n=8) had to walk on a treadmill through a number of virtual hallways and cross a pair of gliding doors that opened and closed at a constant preset frequency (0.5 Hz or 1 Hz). Crossing performance, step durations, and step lengths were used as dependent measures. The results revealed the regulation of locomotion occurred earlier and was more pronounced at 0.5 Hz than at 1 Hz, making performance better at 0.5 Hz. Nevertheless at the two frequencies the control mechanism appears similar; it is grounded on information movement coupling. This control mechanism allows for the production of specific behavior according to the task constraints.