Future Projection in Situation Awareness During Pilot Selection Programs - Case Study Example

Analysis and Measurement of Projection of the Future in Situation Awareness during Pilot Selection Programs Name Institution Date Analysis and Measurement of Projection of the Future in Situation Awareness during Pilot Selection Programs Introduction According to Endsley (2001), situation awareness entails being aware of what is happening, to be able to know the action to take. Essentially, situation awareness involves knowing what is going on around, and make decisions using that information, at present and in the future and thus situation awareness explains what is required to be done to reach goals of a particular task through understanding the vital information to be utilized when making decisions. In aviation, situation awareness is extremely because it has an effect on flying skills. Situation Awareness can affect the ability of pilots to project present and future events and enable them make decisions such as assessment of their progress in whatever environmental conditions they might come across (Endsley, 2001). Analysis and Measurement of Projection of the Future in Situation Awareness Measuring and analyzing situation awareness and using the information obtained from measurement and analysis to develop individual situation awareness skills and instrumentation meant to improve it is the key aspect in projecting the future in Situation Awareness. According to Endsley (2001) situation awareness involves discerning environmental aspects, understanding the present situation and projection of future status. It is therefore important to be able to analyze and measure situation awareness precisely in order to ensure validity and reliability. Some of important techniques in analysis and measurement of situation awareness include; structured interviews, assessable responses, online surveys, in addition to error tracking. These techniques have been particularly important in discerning factors present within the environment and understanding the effect of these factors on the present situation (Wickens, 2008). Projection of future environmental condition involves many factors and their interaction and these factors include: stimuli, short-term memory store, pattern recognition, decision making and executing a response. Interaction of these factors involves a working memory and ability of the memory to recognize the pattern of the interaction of these factors to form an environmental pattern. The environmental pattern then runs a model as a cognitive simulation of what might occur in future from factors presented to the environmental by stimuli and attention processes (Gopher, 1981). The simulation considers numerous prospects and their interactions that should be identified and then prioritized according to their effect on future condition. Accordingly, a working memory should be able to decide the environmental prospects or parameters to give priority. After discerning and understanding the present environment and being in a position to project a variety of prospects into the future, it is extremely important to make a decision on the action to take. This means that situation competence should complement situation awareness and this basically entails decision making (Wickens, 2008). Situation Awareness and Decision Making After detecting, selecting and matching of pattern, a decision should be made and with the progress of the process, cues are sought to help the decision make to collect important information in decision making. The purpose of the cues is for construction and verification of simulation, of the world that a person constructs, validates and adjusts to identify and learn. With the assessment of every situation, a person selects the probable responses to the situation (Prince & Salas, 1998). Decision Making in Situation Awareness during Pilot Selection Programs Lack of time is a major problem when making decisions in aviation. For instance, in case an airplane develops problems, a pilot cannot stop it within the air and shut down its systems to investigate the problem with the airplane. Therefore, decision-making for pilots is presented with problems such as time shortage, unavoidable ambiguity, in addition to incompleteness of pertinent sensory input and this comes with a lot stress for pilots. Additionally, stress can increase with the increase of sensory input due to too much workload placed on pattern recognition to recognize what is applicable and what is irrelevant. Aviation professionals such as pilots, controllers or maintenance experts might not have enough time or might have too much sensory input to adjust to new situations or identify cues required to solve the problem. A person can also miss pertinent cues in case they do not support his/her simulation of the situation. In case cues do not fit, a person can amend the core model or ignore them although ignoring can result to making a wrong decision. Factors have an effect on the available cues to both long-term and working memory for situation evaluation (Prince & Salas, 1998). Establishing how individuals who choose pilot programs process information and their abilities to do this is supposed to significantly reinforce the procedures followed when choosing, categorizing and their training as well. For example, the capacity to determine sensory cues and correctly is very important for aircrew workers because this enables them to make quick and accurate decisions (Prince & Salas, 1998). Situation Awareness Training Needs One way of projecting situation awareness needs can be includes examining how situation awareness errors take place. This can be also attained through identification of the ways in which pilots successfully develop and maintain situation awareness in comparison to pilots who are not good in developing and maintaining situation awareness. Endsley (2000) explains that some of situation awareness errors discovered in studies include workload/distraction, communication/coordination, inappropriate procedures, time pressures, problems with equipment, weather, unfamiliarity, tiredness, night conditions, emotions, among other factors. According to the study, when aviation personnel lost situation awareness it resulted to altitude variations, violating FAR, heading deviation, traffic conflicts as well as the pilots and controllers not adhering to published piloting procedures. Additionally, losing situation awareness also results to unsafe situations. All this indicates problems that take place when situation awareness is lost (Endsley, 2000). Application of Situation Awareness during selection of Pilot Programs Situation awareness can be applied in piloting and aviation as follows: Measurement: In the measurement of situation awareness, the potential participants for pilot programs can be asked questions sporadically during the dynamic simulation regarding the values of different state factors in the process while being supervised. The questions are administered when the display is blanked as this makes the operator to only rely on working memory when answering questions. Situation awareness can also be measured using an approach known as Situation Present Assessment Measure, or SPAM which measures the speed of information access from a non-blanked display and offer a more sensitive information that is constantly disseminated time measure that has a lower likelihood of being at floor levels due to memory decay. Another way of measuring loss of situation awareness can be done from performance on tasks where excellent situation awareness is fundamental. Training: Methods of training individuals to maintain good situation awareness by looking for information or teaching predictive skills are different from techniques used in training other skills. Therefore, situation awareness concept is crucial in enabling higher precision and training requirements when choosing pilot programs. Error analysis: In most cases, implementation of training programs is done to rectify an explicitly identified problem within human-system interaction. Thus situation awareness is essential in investigating accidents and indentifying the key source of problems. Level 1 of situation awareness has been identified as the main source of situation awareness errors in pilot programs. Design: different strategies to system design are likely to be taken in an event where the procedures that were followed are discovered to be wanting than in case situation awareness maintenance is not adequate. If the situation awareness maintenance is inadequate, the design focuses more in identification of information need for tasks and indentifying configurations that can be interpreted within the displays. Specifically, due to differences between situation awareness and routine performance, the display elements supporting global situation awareness, required in the unanticipated situations when things go wrong, will be required to be considerably different from the ones supporting routine performance during normal operations. The difference between normal and unusual information requirements necessitates parallels that accessible within ecological interface design (Endsley & Garland, 2001). Prediction: Situation awareness measures predict and report added variation within tasks like air traffic control that can be accounted for through standard cognitive spatial tests. Teamwork: Team situational awareness is extremely vital in understanding team dynamics in aviation. What every worker knows regarding understanding and workload of their colleagues and how inter-worker communications and technology support teamwork is important in situation awareness (Endsley & Garland, 2001). Automation and workload: This is a very important element of situation awareness because of the stimulating substitution between workload and situation awareness. Such substitutions can be articulated in two forms, namely; the situation here the two constructs vary, whether in accord or in opposition; the other form is how the substitution mediated by the degree of automation within human system interact. The first issue can be handled through identification of the circumstances, and then generation of factorial combinations of high and low on the two variables. For instance, increasing the workload can redirect resources from situation awareness maintenance and thus reducing situation awareness but on the other hand well designed working display can decrease workload and boost situation awareness as well (Endsley & Garland, 2001). There are key actions vital for team situation awareness in commercial pilots and they include: Identification of problems or probable problems Illustrating knowledge of actions that other people take Being aware of the flight details Articulating actions and intentions According to Endsley et al (2000) after measurement of situation awareness, aircrews who are extremely good in situation awareness demonstrate more action within these areas. In addition such aircrews are able to solve problems faster and indentify developing problem situations much faster. Orasanu & Fischer (1997) conducted a study on features of commercial aircrews when making decisions and the study results indicated that when making go/no-go decisions, the crews who perform better attend to more cues that signal deteriorating weather and research to know weather updates and this allows them to plan for a missed approach on time. Regarding a choice type task involving selecting an alternative airport, the study found out that the aircrews who perform better take more time because for instance, better performing crews gather more information and this enables them to make better decisions while poorer performing crews go directly to assessing options without gathering enough information and thus they end up making faulty decisions (Orasanu & Fischer, 1997). Additionally, on analysis of hydraulic failure which represents a scheduling type task, the study indicated that better performing crews take active steps in managing a high workload task. They plan on time regarding actions that are likely to occur within the high workload situations and therefore are more effective in dealing with these tasks (Orasanu & Fischer, 1997). Decision making can also include situation assessment and selecting the action to take. Availability of time, the level of risk, and problem definition are important features of the situation assessment phase. Situation uncertainty and responses availability are vital elements that result to difficulties in decision making for the air crews. If events where cognitive demands are high, the better performing crews manage their efforts by taking actions that can preserve them more time such as holding and through changing roles among the crew. Good situation assessment, emergency planning as well as task management are important behaviors allied to success in decision making. Less efficient pilots have been found to be applying similar strategies within all situations instead of matching specific strategy to a specific situation (Wiggens, Connan & Morris, 1995). Orasanu, Dismukes & Fischer (1993) explain that pilots who have had accidents have a tendency of interpreting cues incorrectly and regularly under-estimate risks allied to a problem, and over-estimate their capacity to deal with perilous situations. A study conducted by Wiggens, Connan & Morris (1995) further indicated that GA pilots whose performance was poor in making decisions on continuing with inclement weather did not have matching skills to the situation. “In the absence of extensive task-allied experience, pilots have a higher likelihood of relying on their self-perceived risk-taking behavior rather than their capability to decide on different decisions” (Endsley et al, 2000). Endsley et al, 2000 argues that military pilots with better situation awareness are better at awareness sharing, pattern matching, spatial capabilities as well as perceptual speed. Elite pilots were also found to perform better on a divided awareness task implied to measure situation awareness. Generally, individuals with better situation awareness have better performance on measures of working memory, visual processing, temporal processing as well as time sharing capability (Endsley et al, 2000). Endsley et al (2000) further explains that assessment of situation awareness behaviors of GA pilots, airline pilots and commercial airline check airmen indicated the following major variations: Increasing levels of pre-flight preparation: GA pilots were concerned on individual preparation prior to the flight; line pilots were more concerned with understanding the equipment and its limits, along with flight briefing. On the other hand, check airmen were more concerned with planning and preparation specific to the flight and collected as adequate information as possible regarding the conditions and flight aspects such as weather and the condition of the airport to enable them prepare in advance. Focusing more on comprehension and projection: GA pilots were perceived to passive recipients of information and they mostly focused on information within the immediate environment which is the level one of situation awareness. On the other hand, line pilots focused on understanding the information which is level 2 of situation awareness and also focused in being active to seek out information while check airmen mostly focused of level 3 of situation awareness and sought to be proactive. They also handled enormous information and intricate relationships between elements within this process (Endsley, 2001). Therefore this indicates that analysis and measurement of projection of the future in situation awareness is essential during selection of pilot programs because different programs necessitate different levels of situation awareness. Conclusion Measurement of situation awareness is difficult since situation awareness is a contingent cognitive condition that only obliquely relates to decision making and performance. Situation awareness is very important in aviation and thus its measurement in projecting the future is critical and thus essential when choosing pilot programs. For instance, most accidents in major airlines involves human errors allied to problems with situation awareness since situation awareness in the long run affects decision making for pilots and other personnel. References Endsley, M, et al. (2000). Pilot Situation Awareness in General Aviation. 44th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society. Endsley. M & Garland, D. (2001). Situation Awareness Analysis and Measurement. Ergonomics in Design: The Quarterly of Human Factors Applications. Vol. 9 (29). Gopher, D. (1981). Incorporation of a Test of Selective Attention in a Pilot Selection Battery. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. Vol. 25 (649). Orasanu, J Dismukes, R & Fischer, U. (1993). Decision errors in the cockpit. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual Meeting. Santa Monica. CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Orasanu, J., & Fischer, U. (1997). Finding decisions in natural environments. Mahwah. NJ: Lawrence Earbaum. Prince, C., & Salas, E. (1998). Situation Awareness for routine flight and decision making. International Journal of Cognitive Ergonomics. Vol. 1 (4). Wiggens, M., Connan, N & Morris, C. (1995). Self-perceptions of weather related decision- making ability amongst pilots. Proceedings of the Eigth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University. Wickens. C. (2008). Situation Awareness: Review of Mica Endsley's 1995 Articles on Situation Awareness Theory and Measurement: Human Factors. The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Vol. 50 (397). Read More

After discerning and understanding the present environment and being in a position to project a variety of prospects into the future, it is extremely important to make a decision on the action to take. This means that situation competence should complement situation awareness and this basically entails decision making (Wickens, 2008). Situation Awareness and Decision Making After detecting, selecting and matching of pattern, a decision should be made and with the progress of the process, cues are sought to help the decision make to collect important information in decision making.

The purpose of the cues is for construction and verification of simulation, of the world that a person constructs, validates and adjusts to identify and learn. With the assessment of every situation, a person selects the probable responses to the situation (Prince & Salas, 1998). Decision Making in Situation Awareness during Pilot Selection Programs Lack of time is a major problem when making decisions in aviation. For instance, in case an airplane develops problems, a pilot cannot stop it within the air and shut down its systems to investigate the problem with the airplane.

Therefore, decision-making for pilots is presented with problems such as time shortage, unavoidable ambiguity, in addition to incompleteness of pertinent sensory input and this comes with a lot stress for pilots. Additionally, stress can increase with the increase of sensory input due to too much workload placed on pattern recognition to recognize what is applicable and what is irrelevant. Aviation professionals such as pilots, controllers or maintenance experts might not have enough time or might have too much sensory input to adjust to new situations or identify cues required to solve the problem.

A person can also miss pertinent cues in case they do not support his/her simulation of the situation. In case cues do not fit, a person can amend the core model or ignore them although ignoring can result to making a wrong decision. Factors have an effect on the available cues to both long-term and working memory for situation evaluation (Prince & Salas, 1998). Establishing how individuals who choose pilot programs process information and their abilities to do this is supposed to significantly reinforce the procedures followed when choosing, categorizing and their training as well.

For example, the capacity to determine sensory cues and correctly is very important for aircrew workers because this enables them to make quick and accurate decisions (Prince & Salas, 1998). Situation Awareness Training Needs One way of projecting situation awareness needs can be includes examining how situation awareness errors take place. This can be also attained through identification of the ways in which pilots successfully develop and maintain situation awareness in comparison to pilots who are not good in developing and maintaining situation awareness.

Endsley (2000) explains that some of situation awareness errors discovered in studies include workload/distraction, communication/coordination, inappropriate procedures, time pressures, problems with equipment, weather, unfamiliarity, tiredness, night conditions, emotions, among other factors. According to the study, when aviation personnel lost situation awareness it resulted to altitude variations, violating FAR, heading deviation, traffic conflicts as well as the pilots and controllers not adhering to published piloting procedures.

Additionally, losing situation awareness also results to unsafe situations. All this indicates problems that take place when situation awareness is lost (Endsley, 2000). Application of Situation Awareness during selection of Pilot Programs Situation awareness can be applied in piloting and aviation as follows: Measurement: In the measurement of situation awareness, the potential participants for pilot programs can be asked questions sporadically during the dynamic simulation regarding the values of different state factors in the process while being supervised.

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