Enhancing Team Performance for Long-Duration Space Missions

Success of exploration missions will depend on skilled performance by a distributed team that includes both the astronauts in space and Mission Control personnel. Coordinated and collaborative teamwork will be required to cope with challenging complex problems in a hostile environment. While thorough preflight training and procedures will equip creW'S to address technical problems that can be anticipated, preparing them to solve novel problems is much more challenging. This presentation will review components of effective team performance, challenges to effective teamwork, and strategies for ensuring effective team performance. Teamwork skills essential for successful team performance include the behaviors involved in developing shared mental models, team situation awareness, collaborative decision making, adaptive coordination behaviors, effective team communication, and team cohesion. Challenges to teamwork include both chronic and acute stressors. Chronic stressors are associated with the isolated and confined environment and include monotony, noise, temperatures, weightlessness, poor sleep and circadian disruptions. Acute stressors include high workload, time pressure, imminent danger, and specific task-related stressors. Of particular concern are social and organizational stressors that can disrupt individual resilience and effective mission performance. Effective team performance can be developed by training teamwork skills, techniques for coping with team conflict, intracrew and intercrew communication, and working in a multicultural team; leadership and teamwork skills can be fostered through outdoor survival training exercises. The presentation will conclude with an evaluation of the special requirements associated with preparing crews to function autonomously in long-duration missions

Portraying the Contribution of Individual Behaviors to Team Cohesion and Performance

Behaviors of individuals in teams both contribute to and are molded by team dynamics. How they do so has been the subject of much research. A method of portraying individuals' behaviors in teams, the Team Diagramming Method (TDM) is presented. Behaviors are rated by other team members on three important dimensions: positivity/negativity, dominant/submissive, and task-orientedness/expressiveness. A study of 5-person teams engaging in a 3-day moon simulation task demonstrated that measures of these perceived behaviors as well as the variances of these behaviors correlated with cohesion measures and performance. The method shows strengths and weaknesses of particular teams and, by comparison with high-performing teams, suggests interventions based on individual as well as team behaviors. The primary goal of this study was to determine the extent to which these team level variables, derived from all team members' rated behaviors, were associated with previous methods of measuring cohesion and with performance. A secondary goal was to determine the stability of TDM measures over time by comparing team level variables based on ratings early and later in the team s work together

Data Mine and Forget It?: A Cautionary Tale

With the development of new technologies, data mining has become increasingly popular. However, caution should be exercised in choosing the variables to include in data mining. A series of regression trees was created to demonstrate the change in the selection by the program of significant predictors based on the nature of variables

Pilot/Controller Coordinated Decision Making in the Next Generation Air Transportation System

Introduction: NextGen technologies promise to provide considerable benefits in terms of enhancing operations and improving safety. However, there needs to be a thorough human factors evaluation of the way these systems will change the way in which pilot and controllers share information. The likely impact of these new technologies on pilot/controller coordinated decision making is considered in this paper using the "operational, informational and evaluative disconnect" framework. Method: Five participant focus groups were held. Participants were four experts in human factors, between x and x research students and a technical expert. The participant focus group evaluated five key NextGen technologies to identify issues that made different disconnects more or less likely. Results: Issues that were identified were: Decision Making will not necessarily improve because pilots and controllers possess the same information; Having a common information source does not mean pilots and controllers are looking at the same information; High levels of automation may lead to disconnects between the technology and pilots/controllers; Common information sources may become the definitive source for information; Overconfidence in the automation may lead to situations where appropriate breakdowns are not initiated. Discussion: The issues that were identified lead to recommendations that need to be considered in the development of NextGen technologies. The current state of development of these technologies provides a good opportunity to utilize recommendations at an early stage so that NextGen technologies do not lead to difficulties in resolving breakdowns in coordinated decision making

Design of a cooperative problem-solving system for enroute flight planning: An empirical study of its use by airline dispatchers

In a previous report, an empirical study of 30 pilots using the Flight Planning Testbed was reported. An identical experiment using the Flight Planning Testbed (FPT), except that 27 airline dispatchers were studied, is described. Five general questions were addressed in this study: (1) under what circumstances do the introduction of computer-generated suggestions (flight plans) influence the planning behavior of dispatchers (either in a beneficial or adverse manner); (2) what is the nature of such influences (i.e., how are the person's cognitive processes changed); (3) how beneficial are the general design concepts underlying FPT (use of a graphical interface, embedding graphics in a spreadsheet, etc.); (4) how effective are the specific implementation decisions made in realizing these general design concepts; and (5) how effectively do dispatchers evaluate situations requiring replanning, and how effectively do they identify appropriate solutions to these situations

Addressing the Challenges in NextGen Decision Making

DTFAWA-10-X-80005, Annex 9NASA provided a broad overview of flight crew decision making and training challenges expected to result from the implementation of NextGen automation, including decision support automation. Recommendations included the following human factors recommendations and caveats for the design of future flight deck systems: - Pilots Need Accurate Mental Models of Automated Systems - Systems Awareness Is Key to Situation Awareness - Changes Must Be Highlighted - CRM \u2018Monitor and Challenge\u2019 Philosophy for Flight Crew Must Also Apply to Flight Deck Automatio

HESSD ’98 100 Errors in Aviation Decision Making: A Factor in Accidents and Incidents

This paper is concerned with errors in decision making, specifically in the aviation domain. Despite efforts to design systems and procedures to support 'correct ' and safe operations, errors in human judgment still occur and contribute to accidents. In their analysis of 37 accidents where crew behavior was a causal factor, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB, 1994) concluded that tactical decision errors contributed to 25 of the accidents, or about two out of three cases. Our discussion will address three issues: (1) What is the nature of decision errors in highrisk, engineered environments like aviation? (We consider aviation decision making to be a kind of "naturalistic decision making", Klein

Focus Article: Taking Stock Of Naturalistic Decision Making

We review the progress of naturalistic decision making (NDM) in the decade since the first conference on the subject in 1989. After setting out a brief history of NDM we identify its essential characteristics and consider five of its main contributions: recognition-primed decisions, coping with uncertainty, team decision making, decision errors, and methodology. NDM helped identify important areas of inquiry previously neglected (e.g. the use of expertise in sizing up situations and generating options), it introduced new models, conceptualizations, and methods, and recruited applied investigators into the field. Above all, NDM contributed a new perspective on how decisions (broadly defined as committing oneself to a certain course of action) are made. NDM still faces significant challenges, including improvement of the quantity and rigor of its empirical research, and confirming the validity of its prescriptive models. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Challenges of NextGen Technologies for Coordinated Decision Making and the Exchange of Information between Pilots and Controllers

Introduction: This paper presents two studies that explore the implications of NextGen technologies for pilot/controller information exchange and coordinated decision making. Method: In Study 1 five participative focus groups were conducted with human factors experts. In Study 2 fifteen interviews were conducted with air traffic controllers. Both studies employed a thematic analysis. Results and Discussion: Results from Study 1 suggest that changes to pilot and controller information acquisition will alter rather than reduce breakdowns in coordinated decision making. Study 2 identified some basic issues in information exchange with NextGen technologies and suggests that some important non-operational information will be lost. Conclusion: The two studies highlight some important challenges that need to be carefully considered as the NextGen technologies move towards maturit

Weather-Related Decision Errors: Differences Across Flight Types

Aviation incidents involving poor weather may be related to cognitive and contextual factors that lead pilots to continue with flights in the face of cues suggesting that doing so could be hazardous (i.e., commit plan continuation errors or PCE). To test this, 276 ASRS incident reports involving in-flight encounters with weather were analyzed. Part 91, 135 and 121 operations were found to differ significantly in their relative frequency of commission of PCEs. Factors such as hours of pilot experience, poor visibility, and crew conflict were related to the performance of a PCE. Different factors were related to PCEs committed within the three Part operations