Using Memory for Prior Aircraft Events to Detect Conflicts Under Conditions of Proactive Air Traffic Control and With Concurrent Task Requirements

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Applied 2016-06, Vol.22 (2), p.211-224
• Main Authors: Bowden, Vanessa K., Loft, Shayne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air Traffic Control; Attention - physiology; Aviation; Bayes Theorem; Computer Simulation; Conflict; Dual Task Performance; Human; Humans; Memory; Memory - physiology; Task Performance and Analysis
• ISSN: 1076-898X; 1939-2192
• DOI: 10.1037/xap0000085

In 2 experiments we examined the impact of memory for prior events on conflict detection in simulated air traffic control under conditions where individuals proactively controlled aircraft and completed concurrent tasks. Individuals were faster to detect conflicts that had repeatedly been presented during training (positive transfer). Bayesian statistics indicated strong evidence for the null hypothesis that conflict detection was not impaired for events that resembled an aircraft pair that had repeatedly come close to conflicting during training. This is likely because aircraft altitude (the feature manipulated between training and test) was attended to by participants when proactively controlling aircraft. In contrast, a minor change to the relative position of a repeated nonconflicting aircraft pair moderately impaired conflict detection (negative transfer). There was strong evidence for the null hypothesis that positive transfer was not impacted by dividing participant attention, which suggests that part of the information retrieved regarding prior aircraft events was perceptual (the new aircraft pair "looked" like a conflict based on familiarity). These findings extend the effects previously reported by Loft, Humphreys, and Neal (2004), answering the recent strong and unanimous calls across the psychological science discipline to formally establish the robustness and generality of previously published effects.