Modelling cognitive processes of experienced air traffic controllers

Abstract

A model of the cognitive activities of experienced air traffic controllers is presented as an example of the challenging theoretical task to model mental processes in a dynamic task environment. Owing to the continuous changes in the task environment and the demand for the temporal co-ordination of activities in air traffic control, the model pays special attention to the mental representation of the situation. This unit of the model plays a salient role in maintaining situational awareness, in anticipating future states, and in co-ordinating simultaneously ongoing events. The assumptions about the mental representation of the changing task environment are discussed within the mental model approach. Its realization within the proposed model is outlined. The model has been developed on the basis of experimental research with air traffic controllers. Brief outlines of the experiments on information intake, and the mental representation as examples of the empirical investigation are presented. In an experiment on information intake, controllers with different levels of experience had to control a traffic scenario while the information on the radar screen and on the flight-strips were masked. The frequencies of unmasking showed that the controller's picture is built up by means of a considerable reduction of information regardless of the level of experience. However, less experienced controllers used more planning data, especially information needed for short-term anticipation. A card-sorting task was used to investigate the underlying dimensions for situation assessment. A measure for correspondence between classifications and multidimensional scaling established that situation assessment is based not only on anticipation, but also on the evaluation of further information processing requirements. The influence of the empirical results on the model is discussed.

An Evidence Accumulation Model for Conflict Detection Performance in a Simulated Air Traffic Control Task

“…These models do not yet include a conflict detection component. Other models of air traffic control performance do include a conflict detection component (Corker et al, 2000;Leiden, Kopardekar, & Green, 2003;Niessen, Eyferth, & Bierwagen, 1999) but do not necessarily describe the cognitive processes that are involved. Fuzzy SDT (Parasuraman, Masalonis, & Hancock, 2000) has been applied to conflict detection, but it is a measurement model rather than a process model.…”

When vaccinating against information reduction works and when it does not work

“…Information Reduction applies in situations in which tasks contain both relevant and irrelevant information, and denotes a change from a strategy that is based on exhaustive processing of all elements of a task to a strategy that skips the irrelevant task elements. Behavior in line with the notion of Information Reduction has been described in educational psychology (Gaeth & Shanteau, 1984), sports (Helsen & Pauwels, 1993), car-driving (Underwood, Crundall, & Chapman, 2002), expert air traffi c controllers (Niessen, Eyferth & Bierwagen, 1999), and in many other domains.…”

Hierarchical Conflict Detection in Air Traffic Control

“…Vingelis, Schaeffer, Stringer, Gromelski, and Ahmed (1990) further suggested that controllers consider aircraft in pairs (i.e., conflicting pairs and others). Pairs of aircraft can be further classified as focal, of immediate value, or extrafocal, not of immediate value (Niessen, Eyferth, & Bierwagen, 1999). Leplat and Bisseret found that controllers made such determinations by comparing six specific attributes of aircraft pairs.…”