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).
