Experimental Analysis of Task Prioritization Training for a Group of University Flight Technology Students

The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in task prioritization performance between pilots who participated in a CTM training course and those who did not. A pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment was used. Pilots enrolled in the Central Washington University Flight Technology Program flew pretest and posttest simulated flights on a Frasca FTD. During a two week period between pretest and posttest simulated flights pilots in the experimental group participated in a CTM training course and pilots in the control group did not. Comparison of pre- and posttest error rates shows the experimental group had a 54% decrease in task prioritization errors and the control group had a 9% increase in errors

Realistic Distractions and Interruptions Impair Simulated Surgical Performance by Novice Surgeons

Hypothesis: Although the risks for operating room distractions and interruptions (ORDIs) are acknowledged, most research on this topic is unrealistic, inconclusive, or methodologically unsound. We hypothesized that realistic ORDIs induce errors in a simulated surgical procedure performed by novice surgeons. Design, Setting, and Participants: Eighteen second-year, third-year and research-year surgical residents completed a within-subjects experiment on a laparoscopic virtual reality simulator. Based on 9 months of operating room observations, 4 distractions and 2 interruptions were designed and timed to occur during critical stages in simulated laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The control factor was the absence or presence of ORDIs, with order randomly counterbalanced across the subjects. Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measure was surgical errors measured by the simulator as damage to arteries, bile duct, or other organs. The second outcome measure was whether the participants remembered a prospective memory task assigned prior to the procedure and important to operative conduct. Results: Major surgical errors were committed in 8 of 18 simulated procedures (44%) with ORDIs versus only 1 of 18 (6%) without ORDIs (P = 0.02). Interrupting questions caused the most errors. Sidebar conversations were the next most likely distraction to lead to errors. Ten of 18 participants (56%) forgot the prospective memory task with ORDIs, while 4 of 18 (22%) forgot the task without ORDIs (P = 0.04). All 8 surgical errors with ORDIs occurred after 1 PM (P = 0.001). Conclusions: Typical ORDIs have the potential to cause operative errors in surgical trainees. This performance deficit was prevalent in the afternoon

Modeling Task Prioritization Behaivors in a Time-Pressured Multitasking Environment

Cockpit task management (CTM) theory is structurally consistent with cognitive multitasking models. Based on the CTM framework, it is hypothesized that aviation task prioritization behavior in human multitasking may be influenced by importance, urgency, performance status, salience, and workload of tasks in a cockpit. A middle fidelity flight simulation study was conducted to test the above hypotheses. Questionnaire data indicated that the perceived task importance, the perceived task urgency and the perceived task salience had significant relationships with the perceived task priority after taking the individual difference and flight situational difference into account. The perceived task priority was related to the task execution time and task performance, but not correlated with task awareness level in the flight simulation

Experimental Analysis of Task Prioritization Training for a Group of University Flight Technology Students

The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in task prioritization performance between pilots who participated in a CTM training course and those who did not. A pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment was used. Pilots enrolled in the Central Washington University Flight Technology Program flew pretest and posttest simulated flights on a Frasca FTD. During a two week period between pretest and posttest simulated flights pilots in the experimental group participated in a CTM training course and pilots in the control group did not. Comparison of pre- and posttest error rates shows the experimental group had a 54% decrease in task prioritization errors and the control group had a 9% increase in errors