Cardiovascular Activity linked to the Emotional State and Cognitive Workload during a Flight Simulation

The identification of physiological markers of emotional and cognitive fluctuations during a flight can be useful to alert of risky situations due to their possible impact on pilot’s mental state and performance. In this study, heart rate (HR) and other features, such as R-R peak interval variability and the spectral power of specific frequency bands, have been extracted from ECG recordings throughout flight simulations. The temporal variation of these features within different experimental conditions has been explored to verify their reliability to discriminate episodes of mental overload. Our results show that the monotonic decrease of HR reflects the emotional regulation, mainly under secondary low cognitive overload. Conversely, the increase of the root mean square successive differences was linked to higher cognitive workload situations. Furthermore, the habituation analysis reveals that these features are severely affected when an external cognitive deman

Busy and confused? High risk of missed alerts in the cockpit: An electrophysiological study

The ability to react to unexpected auditory stimuli is critical in complex settings such as aircraft cockpits or air traffic control towers, characterized by high mental load and highly complex auditory environments (i.e., many different auditory alerts). Evidences show that both factors can negatively impact auditory attention and prevent appropriate reactions. In the present study, 60 participants performed a simulated aviation task varying in terms of mental load (no, low, high) concurrently to a tone detection paradigm in which the complexity of the auditory environment (i.e., auditory load) was manipulated (1, 2 or 3 different tones). We measured both detection performance (miss, false alarm, d’) and brain activity (event-related potentials) associated with the target tone. Our results showed that both mental and auditory loads affected target tone detection performance. Importantly, their combined effects had a large impact on the percentage of missed target tones. While, in the no mental load condition, miss rate was very low with 1 (0.53%) and 2 tones (1.11%), it increased drastically with 3 tones (24.44%), and this effect was accentuated as mental load increased, yielding to the higher miss rate in the 3-tone paradigm under high mental load conditions (68.64%). Increased mental and auditory loads and miss rates were associated with disrupted brain responses to the target tone, as shown by reduced P3b amplitude. In sum, our results highlight the importance of balancing mental and auditory loads to maintain efficient reactions to alarms in complex working environment

Flight simulator and fNIRS : study of relation between acute stress and cognitive workload

In aviation, knowing the internal state of pilots is desirable to prevent and detect abnormal situations such as an excessive cognitive workload (CW) or acute stress, both known to impact human performance 1. Detecting these states becomes crucial with the possible emergence of Single Pilot Operations (SPO), during which tasks will be largely supported by a single pilot and the aircraft systems. The mental constructs of CW and acute stress have been extensively studied in the human factor literature, but the analysis of their respective impact in the same ecological situations remains poorly studied. In the current study, twenty-one private pilots from the French Civil Aviation University were recruited. They all performed two realistic flight simulator scenarios with the same difficult level and duration (around 35 minutes each). The CW was manipulated with the difficulty of a secondary task (low CW vs high CW; for details, see [2]) and the level of stress was manipulated by means of a social stressor (low arousal vs high arousal). We examined brain hemodynamic activity via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) with a portable NIRS system (NIRSport, NIRx Medical Technologies, NY, USA)

Cognitive Abilities and Gender during Air Traffic Controllers Selection and Training

International audienceCONTEXT • Air traffic controllers (ATCO) ensure air traffic safety and efficiency. Their training is complex and costly. French ATCO are civil servants and their training lasts several years (two-year period for initial training, and duration of on-the-job training according to center complexity). The training cost for a French ATCO amounts to several hundred thousand euros. • ATCO are commonly selected by cognitive abilities assessment (Mouratille et al, 2022). Best predictors are work sample, working memory, composite score etc. But an important part of variance is always unexplained (10% of explained variance with cognitive predictors).• However, cognitive abilities are different according to gender (Reynolds, Hajovsky and Caemmerer, 2022). Can it be a problem in a selection context ? A source of adverse impact ?</div

Does hostile intent cause physiological changes? An airport security check simulation experiment

International audienceThe present research was aimed at investigating in a simulation experiment whether the initiation of a hostile project in an environment akin to airport security checkpoints would translate in variation of cardiac activity. Twenty-three participants (eight women) enrolled as mock passengers had to make several traverses of a security checkpoint while carrying luggage containing either a neutral or a falsely dangerous item. The traverses with the falsely dangerous item were associated with an elevation of heart rate and higher drops of heart rate variability than the traverses with the neutral item. These effects were more salient for the first traverses. Implication of results for security management and the role of arousal and mental workload in threat detection are discussed

A Preliminary Study on the Usefulness of Physiological Assessment for the ATCO Selection

International audienc

A meta-analysis on air traffic controllers selection: cognitive and non-cognitive predictors

International audienc

Does hostile intent cause physiological changes? An airport security check simulation experiment

International audienceThe present research was aimed at investigating in a simulation experiment whether the initiation of a hostile project in an environment akin to airport security checkpoints would translate in variation of cardiac activity. Twenty-three participants (eight women) enrolled as mock passengers had to make several traverses of a security checkpoint while carrying luggage containing either a neutral or a falsely dangerous item. The traverses with the falsely dangerous item were associated with an elevation of heart rate and higher drops of heart rate variability than the traverses with the neutral item. These effects were more salient for the first traverses. Implication of results for security management and the role of arousal and mental workload in threat detection are discussed