Review of psychomotor skills in pilot selection research of the U.S. military services.

This review provides an historical perspective of the use of psychomotor, perceptual--cognitive paper-and-pencil, and automated tests for the selection of pilot trainees by the U.S. military services. Automated versions of vintage psychomotor tests (developed in the 1930s and 1940s) seem to be as predictive of military pilot/aviator performance today as in the past. The psychomotor tests receiving the most attention today are the Complex Coordination and Two-Hand Coordination tests originally developed by Mashburn and colleagues [correction of colleges] before World War II (Mashburn, 1934). These tests were significant predictors of Air Force and Navy pass--fail criteria in the past, and automated versions are similarly predictive today. The U.S. Army and Air Force are now using a combination of paper-and-pencil and automated psychomotor--cognitive tests for initial selection (Air Force) or helicopter assignment (Army). It appears that the Navy is considering the use of automated cognitive and psychomotor tests in a selection battery of the future.

Quasi-transfer as a predictor of transfer from simulator to airplane.

Simulators have emerged as important components of flight-training programs. Nevertheless, the development of design principles that can maximize training transfer and cost-benefit trade-offs are not well established. The most significant challenge to research that would bear on simulator design principles is the difficulty and expense of flight transfer experiments. This difficulty and expense can be reduced by the use of an insimulator transfer design, designated here as a quasi-transfer study, in which transfer is to a high-fidelity configuration of a simulator. Of primary concern for such studies is whether the implied assumption of correspondence between quasi-transfer and transfer effects is well founded. In this article, we review evidence that bears on this issue. The evidence is not entirely supportive but does indicate some correspondence between quasi-transfer and transfer.

Comparison of novice and experienced pilots using analog and digital flight displays.

Using 2 computer generated flight displays, 38 flight-naive persons and 18 experienced pilots were taught to perform 5 basic flight maneuvers. One display type used analog tapes to display the flight parameters while the other used digits. After learning to perform the maneuvers to the preset criteria using each of the display types, the subjects had to perform the same maneuvers to the same criterion level with the same displays while performing an aural side task. Overall, the digital displays were more difficult to learn to fly with than the analog displays, and the analog displays resulted in superior performances while under side task loading.

Validation of a proposed pilot-trainee selection system.

The use of an Aircrew Psychomotor Test Device and the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test have been proposed for the selection of U.S. Air Force pilot training candidates. Random samples of the U.S. Air Force Academy's class of 1978 and the class of 1979 were given the proposed tests and followed through undergraduate pilot training. The results cast serious doubt as to the utility of these tests in selecting U.S. Air Force Academy cadets for pilot training.

Sex as a moderator variable in the selection and training of persons for a skilled task.

We gave 51 male and 52 female Air Force Academy Cadets a battery of five cognitive and three perceptual motor tests before they were taught four basic flight maneuvers followed by a complex chandelle maneuver. The results showed that the males were much faster in attaining the criterion level of performance on the flight tasks, and that some of the sex differences in the acquisition of task skills can be reduced by means of pretraining on specific cognitive and motor skills. In the prediction of trials to criterion (acquisition rate) of both the basic and the complex flight maneuvers, individually tailoring the regression equations by sex--as opposed to utilizing general overall regression equations--greatly enhanced the predictive capability.