Anticipatory Processes in Critical Flight Situations

The model of anticipatory behavior control of Hoffmann (2003) is a current concept to describe the central role of anticipatory processes. It extends and changes the focus of the situation awareness concept to describe spatial disorientation. Two simulator studies have been conducted including the exercise black hole approach – a difficult landing procedure at night – with different samples of pilots. Pilots were grouped according to their flight performance in this profile (crash, problems, landing). Results of the heart rate show a significant interaction between the recording sections within the approach and the performance group. Already some miles before the crash point, the increase of heart rate is stronger for pilots who crash-landed. These results indicate that crashed pilots exhibit higher stress levels at the beginning of the landing procedure. This is interpreted as a reflection of subconscious anticipatory processes. Increased awareness about their state should have allowed at least a touch and go maneuver or the decision of flying a go-around

Recovery and performance in sport: Consensus statement

© 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. The relationship between recovery and fatigue and its impact on performance has attracted the interest of sport science for many years. An adequate balance between stress (training and competition load, other life demands) and recovery is essential for athletes to achieve continuous high-level performance. Research has focused on the examination of physiological and psychological recovery strategies to compensate external and internal training and competition loads. A systematic monitoring of recovery and the subsequent implementation of recovery routines aims at maximizing performance and preventing negative developments such as underrecovery, nonfunctional overreaching, the overtraining syndrome, injuries, or illnesses. Due to the inter- and intraindividual variability of responses to training, competition, and recovery strategies, a diverse set of expertise is required to address the multifaceted phenomena of recovery, performance, and their interactions to transfer knowledge from sport science to sport practice. For this purpose, a symposium on Recovery and Performance was organized at the Technical University Munich Science and Study Center Raitenhaslach (Germany) in September 2016. Various international experts from many disciplines and research areas gathered to discuss and share their knowledge of recovery for performance enhancement in a variety of settings. The results of this meeting are outlined in this consensus statement that provides central definitions, theoretical frameworks, and practical implications as a synopsis of the current knowledge of recovery and performance. While our understanding of the complex relationship between recovery and performance has significantly increased through research, some important issues for future investigations are also elaborated

Psychological Fidelity of Simulator Human Performance Limitation Training

Fidelity of simulators for training of pilots has to be judged from the final end of the training goal. This conclusion can be derived from the overview of Hays & Singer (1989), which has been published a considerable time ago. Nevertheless, an ongoing debate questions the need of simulator features like motion for the training of pilots – partly without giving attention to the training goals at hand. Especially in the area of threat and error management requirements for the simulators differ markedly from operational recurrence training. For experienced ATPL- pilots we can assume that a high fidelity visual simulation and a proper representation of the avionics and a high fidelity simulation of the flight dynamics might well be sufficient to refresh rare standard situations. From a psychological point of view we would predict that the well elaborated cognitive model of professional pilots with respect to aircraft, its dynamics and the situation will allow to simulate the situations without motion. Pilots are able to add the not simulated aspects from their highly elaborated mental model. On the other hand a broad range of situations in the area of human performance limitations are beyond the experience of pilots or trainees. A proper simulation of the aircraft performance and the perceptions and sensations is necessary to improve performance by simulator training to cope with situations beyond the standard environment. Especially for successful disorientation recovery training it may be necessary to provide the correct physical sensations enable the pilot to learn the correctly timed and executed actions to re-establish safe flight parameters. Perceptual illusions of the vestibular system and problems in vestibular-optic coordination are core elements in the development of a multitude of spatial disorientation phenomena (Bles, 1998; Cheung, 2004; Previc and Ercoline, 2004). A couple of reports have been published, which show convincingly that disorientation recovery training with a motion base simulator improves performance in jet pilots (Cheung, 2004; Kallus & Tropper, 2004) as well as in helicopter pilots (Hays & Singer, 1989) and in pilots of small VFR aircraft (Kallus, Tropper & Boucsein, 2009). These studies all used simulators, which are at least capable to rotate in one axis. Disorientation due to sensory illusion is not only caused by vestibular illusion (like gyro spin or leans, for details see Previc & Ercoline, 2004 or Kallus & Tropper, 2004). Some accidents in the area of spatial disorientation occur primarily due to visual illusions (like the black hole approach or the runway width/slope illusion). For VFR pilots, flight into IMC is one of the most problematic and often fatal causes of disorientation. Unintended flight into IMC due to gradually worsening weather conditions seems also to be a primarily visual problem. The more visually based disorientation situations might not require motion cues during the training, as motion does not seem to play a predominant role in the development of the state of disorientation. An experimental study was designed to evaluate the role of motion cues for different disorientation recovery exercises in the simulator

Anticipatorily Controlled Top-Down Processes Influence the Impact of Coriolis Effects

The impact of the vestibular-induced Coriolis illusion becomes apparent in spatial disorientation and symptoms of motion sickness. Empirical data indicated that anticipatory processes, evolved by experience, influence the sensation of Coriolis illusion. We measured subjective well-being and stress responses of 13 experienced pilots and 13 non-pilots in order to study the influence of anticipatorily controlled top-down attention on the impact of Coriolis effects and to examine the role of experience. Subjective data and psychophysiological data (EDA, ECG) were recorded, reflecting the underlying psychological processes involved. Participants distracted by doing a reaction test (experimental group) gave higher drowsiness ratings and higher dizziness ratings than non-distracted participants (control group) immediately after the Coriolis induction, independently of experience. EDA data showed higher emotional stress responses in the experimental group throughout the psychophysiological sensation unit of 4x10s. Data suggest that anticipatorily controlled top-down processes are of particular importance in Coriolis-provoking environments

Disorientation in VFR Pilots: Flight Performance and Psychophysiological Changes During a Flight Simulator Training

Disorientation due to flying into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) is a major safety hazard for VFR pilots (VFR: visual flight rules) as confirmed by aviation accident databases. The objectives of our research are the development and evaluation of systematic training programs to cope with different kinds of disorientation phenomena and the analysis of the psychophysiological processes during dis- and reorientation. A study was conducted using the multi-axial moveable flight simulator DISO (AMST Systemtechnik GmbH, Austria). 25 pilots were randomly allocated to one of three testing groups (one control- and two experimental training groups). The flight performance data confirm that participants with a training show better performance data in a test phase than pilots without training. The simulation scenarios are of high impact: Heart rates are clearly increased in response to more demanding segments of flight as e.g. during takeoff and landing. Analyses within the test profile “unusualattitude recovery” demonstrate – in addition to the expected increase of heart rate due to higher mental workload – an important interaction: The increase is lower for pilots having received an unusual-attitude recovery training. First EEG results illustrate changes in the alpha- and beta band due to changing strain. To sum up, this study tries to make a contribution to basic research by analyzing psychophysiological processes as well as to applied science by emphasizing the importance and effectiveness of orientation training programs for VFR pilots

Multidimensional Evaluation of Pilot`S Threat and Error Management Performance During Complex Flight Maneuvers

The present research attempts a multidimensional threat and error management performance analysis of pilots flying according to visual flight rules, during the recovery from four unusual aircraft states: extreme pitch, overbanked attitude, full stall and spin. An anticipative training program was developed based on flight mechanical and psychophysiological analysis of an expert’s performance. Training took place in a flight simulator and was preceded and followed by check flights with an aerobatic aircraft, a Pitts S-2B, supervised by an expert aerobatic flight instructor. In a between-groups design, a multidimensional assessment was applied, comprising psychophysiological measures of arousal, emotion, subjective, workload and anticipative comparison processes as complementary to technical performance criteria. Our results evidenced benefits of combined theoretical and practical anticipative flight instruction for the threat and error management in complex flight maneuvers