The term "situation awareness" has been used in the aviation world because of its prominent role in flight operations, however the term has not been clearly defined. Current research in the aviation field has tried to determine the cognitive factors of situation awareness (SA). This article reports on research undertaken to determine the locus of individual differences in pilot ability to accommodate the demands that SA imposes on memory. The authors focuses on the role of working memory (WM) capacity and long-term working memory (LT-WM) in flight SA. The authors developed and validated spatial and verbal measures of WM capacity and LT-WM skill. Their results show that although both spatial measures of WM capacity and LT-WM skills were important predictors of SA performance, their importance varied as a function of pilot expertise. For novice pilots, spatial WM capacity was most predictive; for experts, spatial LT-WM skill based on configurations of control flight elements (attitude and power) was most predictive for experts. The authors conclude that understanding the cognitive processes that support flight SA will allow aviation professionals to move beyond the retrospective diagnosis of SA failures.
Abstract