Abstract

This research examined the effects of pilot expertise on situation judgment and subsequent selection of actions as a function of situation complexity, flight element type, and control complexity respectively. Forty-seven certificated pilot participants were assigned to either a novice or an expert group based on their flight hours and experience. Each participant viewed flight goals and 54 flight scenarios that varied in complexity. Participants decided whether the flight scenario was consistent or inconsistent with the flight goal. Participants disclosed their selection of corrective flight control actions for the flight scenarios that they judged were inconsistent with the flight goal. The results suggested that novice performance consistently degraded as the flight situation complexity increased, whereas much less performance degradation was found for experts as the situation complexity increased. These findings were interpreted in the context of cognitive theories and potential applications of this research to analysis of pilot performance errors were discussed.