Abstract
Situation awareness is needed to build dynamic mental models of the environment and contributes to safety during flight. Radio communications are key sources of information used by pilots to construct situation models. The present research investigated linguistic features of messages received during flight to understand aging effects on situation awareness. Fifty licensed pilots (age 17 to 71 years) flew a 60-min flight in a Cessna 172 simulator. Situation awareness was objectively measured throughout the flight. EEG was collected using a 14-channel wireless system and produced event-related and spectral indices of mental activity at key brain regions. Linguistic features of radio messages during flight were analyzed. Results showed significant deleterious effects of age on situation awareness. The linguistic features of messages, such as their pitch and intensity, were also associated with specific segments of the messages. EEG results supported the linguistic findings and indicate that age may impact later stages of the language processing pipeline. This research is important for informing efforts, such as the development of cockpit technologies to improve communication, that address older pilot safety.
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Ziccardi, A., Van Benthem, K., Herdman, C.M. (2020). A Language-Oriented Analysis of Situation Awareness in Pilots in High-Fidelity Flight Simulation. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S. (eds) HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Posters. HCII 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1294. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60703-6_82
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60703-6_82
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