I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words.
TITLE:
Investigating the role of flight phase and task difficulty on low-time pilot performance, gaze dynamics and subjective situation awareness during simulated flight.
WHAT?
Study investigating how flight phase and increasing task difficulty affect the performance, situation awareness, and visual monitoring behaviour of low-time pilots. Most previous aviation eye-tracking research has concentrated on experienced pilots rather than the development of monitoring skills early in training. It focused on whether gaze measures can reveal changes in the way pilots process information as cognitive demand increases, where changes that may not be apparent from flight performance alone.
WHERE?
University of Waterloo, Canada.
WHEN?
Published in 2024 in the Journal of Eye Movement Research.
WHY?
Eye tracking potentially provides an objective means of studying the information-processing behaviours underlying effective monitoring, rather than relying solely outcome based parameters such as flight performance measures.
HOW?
24 pilots with fewer than 300 flight hours completed simulated VFR circuits. Difficulty was manipulated by introducing strong crosswinds. Performance, subjective SA and gaze were compared across downwind, base and final approach.
Eye tracking measured variables such as where and for how long pilots looked as well as dynamic measures including gaze entropy, which describes the organisation and predictability of scanning between different information sources.
FINDINGS:
Pilots adapted their visual behaviour as task demands changed. Under more difficult conditions, attention became increasingly directed towards task-critical information. The adaptations appear to have been compensatory, such that despite increased difficulty, changes in SA, and gaze behaviour, flight performance was comparatively well maintained.
Monitoring behaviour was observed to change between downwind, base and final phases of flight as pilots responded to different information requirements.
Dynamic gaze measures proved sensitive enough to distinguish both differences in task difficulty and accumulated flight hours, suggesting that the structure of a pilot’s scanning behaviour may reveal expertise and changes in information processing as these develop.
SO WHAT?
The study demonstrates the potential of eye tracking as a measurement tool capable of exposing cognitive processes hidden behind observable performance.
Two pilots may produce similarly acceptable flight-path performance while using very different attentional strategies, or while experiencing very different levels of cognitive demand. Eye tracking can reveal how performance this is being achieved, including compensatory changes in monitoring behaviour before performance itself deteriorates. However, the authors emphasise that there is no universal “good scan” as gaze metrics are task dependent. The value lies in interpreting gaze alongside operational context, performance and other HF measures.
The accelerating development of eye tracking technology has potentially important applications in aviation human factors for areas such as the study of attention and monitoring, identification of developing expertise, and understanding of workload and SA.
REFERENCE:
Ayala, N., Kearns, S., Irving, E., Cao, S., & Niechwiej-Szwedo, E. (2024). Investigating the role of flight phase and task difficulty on low-time pilot performance, gaze dynamics and subjective situation awareness during simulated flight. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 17(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.17.1.6
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