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Investigating Offshore Helicopter Pilots’ Cognitive Load and Physiological Responses during Simulated In-Flight Emergencies
Abstract
Objectives: This study was designed to explore pilots’ emergency response performance by collecting real-time physiological and cognitive workload data during pre-defined offshore helicopter scenarios in a flight simulator.
Background: Qualification processes require helicopter pilots to complete scheduled simulation training to ensure competency in areas that would otherwise be too dangerous to practice while flying the actual helicopter. Unfortunately, little is known about how effective this simulation training is in regard to cognitive and physiological responses.
Methods: Ten qualified pilots completed six flight simulations while real-time eye tracking and physiological data were collected. The pilots were assigned to one of two groups based on their regular flying position (First Officer (FO) or Captain).
Results: The findings indicated that there is a significant difference in maximal Index of Cognitive Activity (ICAmax) and maximal heart rate (HRmax) values between the two groups while completing the same in-flight emergency scenarios.
Conclusions: Results suggest that FOs found the sessions more cognitively demanding and also indicated they would benefit from learning how Captains conduct their radial scan of instruments. Therefore, it is recommended that visual search patterns are included in initial training, all flight simulator training includes eye tracking, heart rate data are collected, and that future longitudinal research follows new pilots through their training/upgrading process.
... Captains, in general, have more flight experience than first officers, and their eye activities exhibit significant differences. For instance, Taber conducted a comparative analysis between captains and first officers in simulated emergency scenarios, showing first officers could benefit from the radial instrument scans implemented by captains [6]. Similarly, a study by Lounis and colleagues scrutinized the eye movements of neophytes and seasoned pilots during simulated manual landings [7]. ...
... For example, blood pressure has been explored as a potential indicator re ecting the states of emergency responders. Also, physiological indicators related to heart rate have been a focal point in research on emergency rescue scenarios (Davila et al., 2021;Parent and Gagnon, 2016;Corrigan et al., 2021;Hourani et al., 2020;Taber, 2021). Response time and fatigue states are also key measures used to assess the states of individuals. ...
Existing studies often overlook the additional impact of increased communication demands from Emergency Rescue Personnel (ERP) on apron controllers during aircraft-forced landings, leading to inaccurate workload assessments. This paper presents a quantitative approach to improve the evaluation of apron controllers’ workloads during emergency ground rescues by incorporating the states of ERP. Firstly, the approach systematically standardizes and calculates four features (apron controllers’ verbal communication signals, situation awareness, task complexity, and task performance) to quantify their workload. A correlation analysis follows this quantitation to identify key indicators representing the ERP’s states as replacements for the original communication-related features by determining their correlations with the apron controller's workload for improving the accuracy of workload evaluations. Additionally, subjective assessments from experienced apron controllers were collected to verify the effectiveness of the proposed quantitative workload approach by correlating them with the evaluated workload results. An experiment was conducted, in which 6 apron controllers and 10 ERPs were included to perform control and predetermined tasks, respectively, under four diverse emergency scenarios across three different periods, involving bidirectional communication (instructions given before and after each task). Using ERP’s fatigue states as one of the measures of the apron controller’s workload level would result in workload calculations with less error, confirming the superiority of using the new indicators screened by the proposed approach to quantify workload during apron emergency rescue control. This enhances the effectiveness of apron control operations in high-pressure situations, thereby securing more emergency response efforts.
... Pilot SA is also constrained by task characteristics [19]. For example, researches show that with the increase of task complexity or time pressure, the challenges to pilot attention allocation get worse because of multitasking, resulting in distraction under high workload and SA degradation in consequence [20][21][22][23]. Besides, pilot SA is also shaped by human-machine interaction system in cockpit, an interaction medium between pilot and external flight situations. ...
Pilot situation awareness (SA) regulates flight safety, and inexperience may impair novice pilot reliability in SA. This study aims to determine the key influencing factors of novice pilot SA and to analyze the interrelationship and interaction mechanism of the factors. We investigated 55 novice pilots trained at aviation schools and identified the influencing factor index system by the Delphi survey. The method of Decision Making Trial and Evaluation (DEMATEL) combined with Adversarial Interpretive Structure Modeling (AISM) was adopted. The results show that: (1) The influencing factor index system includes 18 factors, divided into four categories: individual factors, team factors, task and human-machine system factors, and cockpit environment factors. (2) Team communication, team cooperation, basic cognitive ability, interface design, occupational age and experience, and authority gradient are the six crucial influencing factors. The former three have the greatest association with other factors, while the latter three are most likely to affect other factors. (3) Team communication, basic cognitive ability, and interface design are root-cause factors, of which team communication is the most fundamental. (4) The results of DEMATEL and AISM are consistent, both disclosing team communication as the fundamental factor with the highest priority, and cockpit environmental factors as the direct influencing factors but most susceptible to other factors. The present study can be viewed as a conducive attempt to extract vital influencing factors of novice pilot SA, and to provide ergonomic insights for determining the priorities to improve novice pilot SA in training and aircraft design for flight safety.
... It is obvious that the status of an operator's SA is very important during the mission, and thus there exist lots of measurement methods for SA, such as situation present assessment method (SPAM) [6], SA global assessment technique (SAGAT) [7], and physiological process indices [8]. However, till now, there is no method that can measure the status of SA in real-time with high accuracy. ...
The status of an operator's situation awareness is one of the critical factors that influence the quality of the missions. Thus the measurement method of the situation awareness status is an important topic to research. So far, there are lots of methods designed for the measurement of situation awareness status, but there is no model that can measure it accurately in real-time, so this work is conducted to deal with such a gap. Firstly, collect the relevant physiological data of operators while they are performing a specific mission, simultaneously, measure their status of situation awareness by using the situation awareness global assessment technique (SAGAT), which is known for accuracy but cannot be used in real-time. And then, after the preprocessing of the raw data, use the physiological data as features, the SAGAT's results as a label to train a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM), which is an explainable and powerful intelligent model. Also, a hybrid learning algorithm of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and gradient descent is proposed for the FCM training. The final results show that the learned FCM can assess the status of situation awareness accurately in real-time, and the proposed hybrid learning algorithm has better efficiency and accuracy.
Objective- In order to systematically study the influencing factors of commercial pilots’ SA, this research aims to establish an index system of influencing factors of pilots’ SA. Methods- The scores of indicators are acquired by 5 Likert rating scale and a consensus was reached after 2 rounds of the Delphi method. Results- The final system included 4 primary indicators and 18 secondary indicators. The survey response rate in both rounds is higher than 0.75, the degree of authority of experts is higher than 3.5, and the final expert coordination coefficient is 0.058. Conclusions- The four most influential factors are: crew communication ability, task complexity, basic cognitive ability, and operational mental state, with temperature and humidity environment and circadian environment having the two least important effects. Application- The constructed index system can be applied to pilots training in the future, strengthening pilots’ SA and crew coordination.KeywordsDelphi methodPilot’s SAEvaluation index system
This review paper discusses the trends and projections for wearable technology in the consumer sports sector (excluding professional sport). Analyzing the role of wearable technology for different users and why there is such a need for these devices in everyday lives. It shows how different sensors are influential in delivering a variety of readings that are useful in many ways regarding sport attributes. Wearables are increasing in function, and through integrating technology, users are gathering more data about themselves. The amount of wearable technology available is broad, each having its own role to play in different industries. Inertial measuring unit (IMU) and Global Positioning System (GPS) sensors are predominantly present in sport wearables but can be programmed for different needs. In this review, the differences are displayed to show which sensors are compatible and which ones can evolve sensor technology for sport applications.
Pilots undergo a variety of stressors that may affect their performance during all phases of flight. Heart rate variability (HRV) has been considered as a reliable indicator of the parasympathetic and sympathetic activities of human autonomic nervous system, which can be used to characterize the sympathetic stress response of pilots during flight. In this study, thirty active commercial airline pilots were recruited to fly three flight segments in a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-certified A320 flight simulator with each segment at a different carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration on the flight deck. The pilots performed a series of maneuvers of varying difficulty, and their performance was evaluated by FAA designated pilot examiners. The HRV metrics (SDNN, RMSSD and LF/HF ratio) of each pilot both before and during flight simulations were measured with a Movisens EcgMove3 sensor. The average SDNN, RMSSD and LF/HF ratio of the pilots during flight simulations were 34.1 ± 12.7 ms, 23.8 ± 10.2 ms and 5.7 ± 2.8 respectively. Decreased HRV was associated with aging, obesity and performing difficult maneuvers. Both CO2 exposure and HRV had an independent effect on the pilot performance, while their interaction was not significant. The generalized additive mixed effect model results showed that a pilot performed better on a maneuver when his stress response was lower, as indicated by higher SDNN and RMSSD and lower LF/HF ratio. An interquartile range (IQR) increase in SDNN (21.97 ms) and RMSSD (16.00 ms) and an IQR decrease in LF/HF ratio (4.69) was associated with an increase in the odds of passing a maneuver by 37%, 22% and 20%, respectively.
Objective: The aim of this article is to present a comprehensive review of eye-tracking measures and discuss different application areas of the method of eye tracking in the field of aviation.
Background: Psychophysiological measures such as eye tracking in pilots are useful for detecting fatigue or high-workload conditions, for investigating motion sickness and hypoxia, or for assessing display improvements and expertise.
Method: We review the uses of eye tracking on pilots and include eye-tracking studies published in aviation journals, with both a historical and contemporary view. We include 79 papers and assign the results to the following three categories: Human performance, aircraft design, health and physiological factors affecting performance. We then summarize the different uses of eye tracking in each category and highlight metrics which turned out to be useful in each area. Our review is complementary to that of Ziv (2016).
Results: On the basis of these analyses, we propose useful application areas for the measurement of eye tracking. Eye tracking has the potential to be effective in terms of preventing errors or injuries by detecting, for example, fatigue or performance decrements. Applied in an appropriate manner in simulated or real flight it can help to ensure optimal functioning of man–machine systems.
Conclusion: Further aviation psychology and aerospace medicine research will benefit from measurement of eye movements.
Pupillometry research has experienced an enormous revival in the last two decades. Here we briefly review the surge of recent studies on task-evoked pupil dilation in the context of cognitive control tasks with the primary aim being to evaluate the feasibility of using pupil dilation as an index of effort exertion, rather than task demand or difficulty. Our review shows that across the three cognitive control domains of updating, switching, and inhibition, increases in task demands typically leads to increases in pupil dilation. Studies show a diverging pattern with respect to the relationship between pupil dilation and performance and we show how an effort account of pupil dilation can provide an explanation of these findings. We also discuss future directions to further corroborate this account in the context of recent theories on cognitive control and effort and their potential neurobiological substrates.
Heart rate variability (HRV) is non-invasive and commonly used for monitoring responses to training loads, fitness, or overreaching in athletes. Yet, the recording duration for a series of RR-intervals varies from 1 to 15 min in the literature. The aim of the present work was to assess the minimum record duration to obtain reliable HRV results. RR-intervals from 159 orthostatic tests (7 min supine, SU, followed by 6 min standing, ST) were analyzed. Reference windows were 4 min in SU (min 3–7) and 4 min in ST (min 9–13). Those windows were subsequently divided and the analyses were repeated on eight different fractioned windows: the first min (0–1), the second min (1–2), the third min (2–3), the fourth min (3–4), the first 2 min (0–2), the last 2 min (2–4), the first 3 min (0–3), and the last 3 min (1–4). Correlation and Bland & Altman statistical analyses were systematically performed. The analysis window could be shortened to 0–2 instead of 0–4 for RMSSD only, whereas the 4-min window was necessary for LF and total power. Since there is a need for 1 min of baseline to obtain a steady signal prior the analysis window, we conclude that studies relying on RMSSD may shorten the windows to 3 min (= 1+2) in SU or seated position only and to 6 min (= 1+2 min SU plus 1+2 min ST) if there is an orthostatic test. Studies relying on time- and frequency-domain parameters need a minimum of 5 min (= 1+4) min SU or seated position only but require 10 min (= 1+4 min SU plus 1+4 min ST) for the orthostatic test.
Eye movement research is a highly active and productive research field. Here we focus on how the embodied nature of eye movements can act as a window to the brain and the mind. In particular, we discuss how conscious perception depends on the trajectory of fixated locations and consequently address how fixation locations are selected. Specifically, we argue that the selection of fixation points during visual exploration can be understood to a large degree based on retinotopically structured models. Yet, these models largely ignore spatiotemporal structure in eye-movement sequences. Explaining spatiotemporal structure in eye-movement trajectories requires an understanding of spatiotemporal properties of the visual sampling process. With this in mind, we discuss the availability of external information to internal inference about causes in the world. We demonstrate that visual foraging is a dynamic process that can be systematically modulated either towards exploration or exploitation. For an analysis at high temporal resolution, we suggest a new method: The renewal density allows the investigation of precise temporal relation of eye movements and other actions like a button press. We conclude with an outlook and propose that eye movement research has reached an appropriate stage and can easily be combined with other research methods to utilize this window to the brain and mind to its fullest.
It is well known that long-duration spaceflight results in deconditioning of neuromuscular and cardiovascular systems, leading to a decline in physical fitness. Upon reloading in gravitational environments, reduced fitness (e.g., aerobic capacity, muscular strength and endurance) could impair human performance, mission success, and crew safety. The level of fitness necessary for the performance of routine and off-nominal terrestrial mission tasks remains an unanswered and pressing question for scientists and flight physicians. To mitigate fitness loss during spaceflight, resistance and aerobic exercise is the most effective countermeasure available to astronauts. Currently, 2.5 h[BULLET OPERATOR]day-1, 6-7 d[BULLET OPERATOR]wk-1 is allotted in crew schedules for exercise to be performed on highly specialized hardware on the International Space Station (ISS). Exercise hardware provides up to 273 kg of loading capability for resistance exercise, treadmill speeds between 0.44-5.5 m[BULLET OPERATOR]s-1, and cycle workloads from 0-350 W. Compared to ISS missions, future missions beyond low earth orbit will likely be accomplished with less vehicle volume and power allocated for exercise hardware. Concomitant factors such as diet and age will also affect the physiologic responses to exercise training (e.g., anabolic resistance) in the space environment. Research into the potential optimization of exercise countermeasures through use of dietary supplementation and pharmaceuticals may assist in reducing physiological deconditioning during long-duration spaceflight and have the potential to enhance performance of occupationally related astronaut tasks (e.g., extravehicular activity, habitat construction, equipment repairs, planetary exploration, and emergency response). Copyright (C) 2015 by the National Strength & Conditioning Association.
The concept of tacit knowledge encompasses all of the intricacy of the different experiences that people acquire over time, and which they utilize and bring to bear in carrying out tasks effectively, reacting to unforeseen circumstances, or innovating. The intuitive nature of tacit knowledge, its particular context, and the difficulty of expressing it in words call into question the very foundation of the notion of competency and its value in education. What parameters might be used to clarify tacit knowledge and its place within so-called “organizational” knowledge? Certain characteristics of tacit knowledge may contribute new considerations to the ongoing debate as to the true nature of competency.
Arguing against a concept of learning as only a formal process occurring in explicitly educational settings like schools, the paper proposes a conception of the workplace as a learning environment focusing on the interaction between the affordances and constraints of the social setting, on the one hand, and the agency and biography of the individual participant, on the other. Workplaces impose certain expectations and norms in the interest of their own continuity and survival, and in the interest of certain participants; but learners also choose to act in certain ways dependent on their own preferences and goals. Thus, the workplace as a learning environment must be understood as a complex negotiation about knowledge‐use, roles and processes – essentially as a question of the learner's participation in situated work activities.
With respect to the ergonomic evaluation and optimization in the mental task design of the aircraft cockpit display interface, the experimental measurement and theoretical modeling of mental workload were carried out under flight simulation task conditions using the performance evaluation, subjective evaluation and physiological measurement methods. The experimental results show that with an increased mental workload, the detection accuracy of flight operation significantly reduced and the reaction time was significantly prolonged; the standard deviation of R-R intervals (SDNN) significantly decreased, while the mean heart rate exhibited little change; the score of NASA_TLX scale significantly increased. On this basis, the indexes sensitive to mental workload were screened, and an integrated model for the discrimination and prediction of mental workload of aircraft cockpit display interface was established based on the Bayesian Fisher discrimination and classification method. The original validation and cross-validation methods were employed to test the accuracy of the results of discrimination and prediction of the integrated model, and the average prediction accuracies determined by these two methods are both higher than 85%. Meanwhile, the integrated model shows a higher accuracy in discrimination and prediction of mental workload compared with single indexes. The model proposed in this paper exhibits a satisfactory coincidence with the measured data and could accurately reflect the variation characteristics of the mental workload of aircraft cockpit display interface, thus providing a basis for the ergonomic evaluation and optimization design of the aircraft cockpit display interface in the future.
The objective of this study was to examine the effect of fluid intake and possible dehydration on cognitive flight performance of pilots. A repeated-measures, counterbalanced, mixed study design was used to examine differences in working memory, spatial orientation, and cognitive flight performance of 40 randomly selected healthy pilots after having high and low fluid intakes. Serial weights were also analyzed to determine differences in cognitive flight performance of the dehydrated (1-3% weight loss) and hydrated study participants. Results showed flight performance and spatial cognition test scores were significantly (p < 0.05) poorer for pilots who had low fluid intakes and experienced dehydration in comparison to the hydrated pilots. These findings indicate fluid intake differences resulting in dehydration may have safety implications because peak cognitive performance among pilots is critical for flight safety.
Two experiments examined the effectiveness of the pupillary response as a measure of cognitive load in younger and older adults. Experiment 1 measured the change in pupil size of younger and older adults while they listened to spoken digit lists that varied in length and retained them briefly for recall. In Experiment 2 changes in relative pupil size were measured while younger and older adults listened to sentences for later recall that varied in syntactic complexity and sentence length. Both age groups' pupil sizes were sensitive to the size of the memory set in Experiment 1 and sentence length in Experiment 2, with the older adults showing a larger effect of the memory load on a normalized measure of pupil size relative to the younger adults. By contrast, only the younger adults showed a difference in the pupillary response to a change in syntactic complexity, even with an adjustment for the reduced reactivity of the older pupil.
Abstract: The goal of this research was to develop greater understanding of how environmental factors such as passive heat stress (through cockpit solar loading) might influence performance of offshore helicopter pilots who are completing simulated in-flight emergencies. Real-time physiological data such as heart rate, respiration, skin temperature, and eye tracking were used as objective quantitative measures to contextualise performance based on realistic environmental conditions. Results indicated a significant difference in skin temperature (Tskin) when comparing baseline (denoted as normal training conditions in this study) and testing completed after being exposed to passive heating for 90 minutes in 30°C ambient air temperature. Results also indicate that there were significantly higher numbers of fixations and increased index of cognitive activity (ICA) after passive heating. It is recommended that pilots are provided the opportunity to complete flight simulator training/assessment while wearing full flight ensemble (e.g., immersion suit, gloves, life vest, helmet/headset, etc…).
This article makes situated learning theories central to an analysis of offshore
helicopter in-flight emergency response, where rule following is mandatory for safety
reasons. We examine the ways in which individual learning is connected to situated
learning, particularly as relates to multiple forms of knowledge and directive
documentation such as Standard Operating Procedures and emergency checklists. The
analysis connects to sociotechnical skills, contextual factors, and organizational culture;
details five generations of Crew Resource Management (CRM) training, positioning
this research within the fifth generation and in relation to Situation Awareness (SA). It
describes and provides guidance on how training, which is focused on error
recognition, management, and mitigation, as well as communication, understanding,
and innovation, can improve CRM performance. Finally, we make recommendations
for future research based on our analysis for combining CRM and SA in ways that
enable the sharing of tacit knowledge to increase pilots’ understanding of their work
through legitimate peripheral participation.
A review of 37 studies that included both objective and subjective measures of situation awareness (SA) was conducted. Objective and subjective measures of SA were found to diverge across a wide range of measurement techniques. Reasons for these differences include a lack of meta-awareness about one’s own SA, poor SA/confidence calibration, and confounds with workload among some measures. A model that shows how objective and subjective SA combine to affect performance is presented.
The construction process is considered a very risky endeavor because of the high frequency of work-related
injuries and fatalities. The collection and analysis of safety data is an important element in measurement and
improvement strategy development. The adoption of wearable technology has the potential for a result-oriented data collection and analysis approach to providing real-time information to construction personnel. The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the applications of wearable technology for personalized construction safety monitoring. The characteristics of wearable devices and safety metrics thought to
be capable of predicting safety performance and management practices are identified and analyzed. The review
indicates that the existing wearable technologies applied in other industrial sectors can be used to monitor and measure a wide variety of safety performance metrics within the construction industry. Benefits of individual wearable sensors or systems can be integrated based on their attributes for multi-parameter monitoring of safety performance.
Fighter pilots’ heart rate (HR), heart rate variation (HRV) and performance during instrument approaches were examined. The subjects were required to fly instrument approaches in a high-fidelity simulator under various levels of task demand. The task demand was manipulated by increasing the load on the subjects by reducing the range at which they commenced the approach. HR and the time domain components of HRV were used as measures of pilot mental workload (PMWL). The findings of this study indicate that HR and HRV are sensitive to varying task demands. HR and HRV were able to distinguish the level of PMWL after which the subjects were no longer able to cope with the increasing task demands and their instrument landing system performance fell to a sub-standard level. The major finding was the HR/HRV’s ability to differentiate the sub-standard performance approaches from the high-performance approaches.
Practitioner Summary:
This paper examined if HR and HRV were sensitive to varying task demands in a fighter aviation environment and if these measures were related to variations in pilot’s performance.
What pilots do on the job frequently is analyzed in terms of individual skills and human factors. Performances often do not consist of separable skills but of a holistic event, which can be analyzed into irreducible, mutually constitutive moments. A discursive psychology approach was used to analyze the discourse of flight examiners, based on 7 extended interviews about performance aspects. This study shows that in the discourse of flight examiners, cockpit performance is presented holistically, even though it manifests itself in different ways. Six main discourse repertoires are identified in examiners’ discourse about flight deck performance, each of which has between 3 and 5 identifiable subdimensions. Case studies show the connectedness and interdetermination of the 6 main repertoires for talking about what pilots do and how they do it.
This paper addresses the fundamental discipline theoretic question of whether situation awareness is a phenomenon best described by psychology, engineering or systems ergonomics. Each of these disciplines places a different emphasis on the notion of what situation awareness is and how it manifests itself. The approach from psychology places situation awareness as something that can only exist in the minds of people in a system. This means that the unit of analysis is the individual and that team situation awareness is the summation of individual situation awareness. The engineering perspective puts situation awareness in the world, represented in the artefacts and objects that people use. This means that the unit of analysis is the things that people interact with. Finally, the systems ergonomics perspective places emphasis on the interaction between people and their artefacts in the world, to propose that situation awareness functions like distributed cognition. This means that the unit of analysis is the whole socio-technical system. Each of these perspectives is presented and compared with reference to studies in aviation and other domains. It is concluded that the distributed cognition perspective of situation awareness offers the most comprehensive explanation of the phenomena observed in socio-technical systems. Socio-technical systems theory allows exploration of the social and technical sub-systems independently, which offers a theoretical framework for aligning the three views of situation awareness.
Purpose
This paper aims to examine employees' conceptions of the meaning of experience in job‐competence and its development in workplace context. The aim is to bring out the variety of conceptions related to experience, competence and workplace learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on interview data from six Finnish small and medium sized enterprises. The data were collected as a part of a larger European Union research project, Working Life Changes and Training of Older Workers (WORKTOW) during spring 1999. The approach chosen for the analysis presented in this paper was phenomenography.
Findings
The findings in the paper show the importance accorded to experience in competence and in workplace learning. The employees valued work experience as the main source of their competence. They also developed their competence mainly through learning at work. The role of social participation in work communities and learning through experiences was emphasized.
Practical implications
The paper shows that differentiating employees' conceptions paves a way to more specific perspectives on the development and utilisation of experience‐based competence in work communities and organisations.
Originality/value
In this paper the findings are discussed in the light of construction and development of older workers' job‐competence in working life. It is argued that experience serves several kinds of purposes in workplace learning also among experienced workers.
This paper discusses theoretical constructs from various domains to
explore emergency response management. Using the Piper Alpha disaster as
an example, we argue that applying a communities of practice lens can
inform understandings of safety cultures, shared situation awareness, and
tacit knowledge. First, we briefly outline the Piper Alpha event and detail
communities of practice theory with a critical analysis of how it can be applied
to emergency response events with respect to safety cultures. Then, we connect
the development and maintenance of situation awareness and tacit knowledge
to our argument as it relates to actions performed in relation to the emergency
event. Finally, we provide a concluding discussion of the Piper Alpha disaster
in order explore implications for emergency response management.
Currently, surgical skills assessment relies almost exclusively on subjective measures, which are susceptible to multiple biases. We investigate the use of eye metrics as an objective tool for assessment of surgical skill.
Eye tracking has helped elucidate relationships between eye movements, visual attention, and insight, all of which are employed during complex task performance (Kowler and Martins, Science. 1982;215:997-999; Tanenhaus et al, Science. 1995;268:1632-1634; Thomas and Lleras, Psychon Bull Rev. 2007;14:663-668; Thomas and Lleras, Cognition. 2009;111:168-174; Schriver et al, Hum Factors. 2008;50:864-878; Kahneman, Attention and Effort. 1973). Discovery of associations between characteristic eye movements and degree of cognitive effort have also enhanced our appreciation of the learning process.
Using linear discriminate analysis (LDA) and nonlinear neural network analyses (NNA) to classify surgeons into expert and nonexpert cohorts, we examine the relationship between complex eye and pupillary movements, collectively referred to as eye metrics, and surgical skill level.
Twenty-one surgeons participated in the simulated and live surgical environments. In the simulated surgical setting, LDA and NNA were able to correctly classify surgeons as expert or nonexpert with 91.9% and 92.9% accuracy, respectively. In the live operating room setting, LDA and NNA were able to correctly classify surgeons as expert or nonexpert with 81.0% and 90.7% accuracy, respectively.
We demonstrate, in simulated and live-operating environments, that eye metrics can reliably distinguish nonexpert from expert surgeons. As current medical educators rely on subjective measures of surgical skill, eye metrics may serve as the basis for objective assessment in surgical education and credentialing in the future. Further development of this potential educational tool is warranted to assess its ability to both reliably classify larger groups of surgeons and follow progression of surgical skill during postgraduate training.
The application of heart rate and respiratory measures to the human factors of flight is discussed. The concept of pilot workload is related to the concept of arousal and distinguished from physical workload. Finds from studies of pilot workload using heart rate measures are reviewed for flight, simulated flight and related real-life challenges. Measurement techniques and transducers are discussed from the perspective of field measurement. Recommended procedures are presented as are directions for future work.
This individual differences study examined the separability of three often postulated executive functions-mental set shifting ("Shifting"), information updating and monitoring ("Updating"), and inhibition of prepotent responses ("Inhibition")-and their roles in complex "frontal lobe" or "executive" tasks. One hundred thirty-seven college students performed a set of relatively simple experimental tasks that are considered to predominantly tap each target executive function as well as a set of frequently used executive tasks: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Tower of Hanoi (TOH), random number generation (RNG), operation span, and dual tasking. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the three target executive functions are moderately correlated with one another, but are clearly separable. Moreover, structural equation modeling suggested that the three functions contribute differentially to performance on complex executive tasks. Specifically, WCST performance was related most strongly to Shifting, TOH to Inhibition, RNG to Inhibition and Updating, and operation span to Updating. Dual task performance was not related to any of the three target functions. These results suggest that it is important to recognize both the unity and diversity of executive functions and that latent variable analysis is a useful approach to studying the organization and roles of executive functions.
This paper describes a new approach for identifying cognitive state by using information obtained only from the eye. Data are collected from cameras mounted on a lightweight headband. A set of eye metrics captures essential eye information from the raw data of pupil size and point-of-gaze. The metrics are easily calculated every second, so that the entire set of metrics can be computed in real time.
Three studies provide empirical evidence to test whether the eye metrics are sufficient to discriminate between two different cognitive states. The first study examines the states of relaxed and engaged in the context of problem solving. The second study looks at the states of focused and distracted attention in the context of driving. The third study inspects the states of alert and fatigued in the context of visual search. Two statistical models are used to classify cognitive state for all three studies: linear discriminant function analysis and non-linear neural network analysis. Data for the models are eye metrics computed at 1-, 4-, and 10-s intervals.
All discriminant function analyses are statistically significant, and classification rates are high. Neural network models have equal or better performance than discriminant function models across all three studies.
The seven eye metrics successfully discriminate between the states in all studies. Models from individual participants as well as the aggregate model over all participants are successful in identifying cognitive states based on task condition. Classification rates compare favorably with similar studies.
The Index of Cognitive Activity is an innovative technique that provides an objective psychophysiological measurement of cognitive workload. As users operate in increasingly complex environments, it is essential that the designers of these environments understand the cognitive demands placed on the users. The Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA) provides an important estimate of the levels of cognitive effort of the user. The ICA is based on changes in pupil dilation that occur as a user interacts with a visual display. The Index is described, and several applications are presented.
Engaging minds: Learning and teaching in a complex world
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How to solve aviation's talent gap problem
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