Effect of communications headset, hearing ability, flight workload, and communications signal quality on pilot performance in an Army Black Hawk helicopter simulator

The Effects of Simulated Hearing Loss on Speech Recognition and Walking Navigation

“…As intercrew communication intelligibility decreased, combat performance metrics degraded: The time to identify enemy targets increased, the number of enemy targets destroyed decreased, the number of friendly targets destroyed increased, and the number of (simulated) casualties among vehicle crews increased (Garinther & Peters, 1990; Garinther, Whitaker, & Peters, 1994; Peters & Garinther, 1990; Whitaker, 1991; Whitaker, Peters, & Garinther, 1989, 1990). In the case of the aircraft environment, flight characteristics, such as speed and altitude, became more varied, and deviations from the prescribed flight path increased with combinations of increased workload, poor communications signal quality, and decreased speech intelligibility (Casto & Casali, 2010; Valimont, Casali, & Lancaster, 2006). In general, as intelligibility of the task-related communications decreased, the task performance also decreased in an almost linear manner (Garinther & Peters, 1990).…”