Sunday, October 27, 2019

Understanding Cockpits as Cognitive Systems


From UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Cognition in Flight: Understanding Cockpits as Cognitive Systems

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Cognitive Science by Barbara E. Holder




Utilizing principles of Hutchins (1995) distributed cognition theoretical framework I set about the task of describing how the cockpit functioned as a cognitive system in both cases.

Thinking of a cockpit as a cognitive system requires an expanded unit of analysis that includes not just the pilots, but also the displays, procedures and interactions that contribute to aircraft operation. Thus, the cockpit may be seen as an information processing system that is distributed across its social, physical, and conceptual environments. 

Pilots are participants in a cognitive system and aircraft behavior is not merely a function of pilot knowledge it also depends on how pilots coordinate cockpit resources to organize actions, decisions, and judgements.

Recent research in cockpit workload management suggests that preoccupation with one task may result in the shedding of other important tasks. Under some circumstances the tasks shed may include the navigation and control of the aircraft. 

Raby and Wickens (1994) found that as workload increased, subjects adjusted their task 16 16 performance strategies, but those strategies were not elaborate. Tasks of higher priority were given more attention over time and lower priority tasks were further degraded in priority or shed. 

They concluded pilots who performed well appeared to perform their tasks earlier and were more flexible in switching between tasks. Attention saturation, or tunnel vision, may be induced by cognitive demand (Williams, 1995).

Information gathering activities that contribute to situation awareness add to workload and the maintenance of situation awareness requires resources that may compete with ongoing task performance(Adams, Tenney, & Pew, 1995). 

In situations where the state of the aircraft is changing not every change is important nor meaningful. Pilots who shift attention from one item to another may not be able to formulate a coherent picture, but unless pilots shift attention critical cues needed to update a situation assessment may be missed (Woods, Johannesen, Cook, & Sarter, 1994).