Colloquium: Andrea Sepulcri (C&O)

Recurrent training is crucial to helping pilots maintain or upgrade their flying skills. However, constantly monitoring and scrutinising pilots during training can lead to performance pressure. If pilots who are under pressure feel that their behaviour is affected it may ultimately reduce the effectiveness of recurrent training. To study the effects of performance pressure on pilot behaviour and learning, pilots (n=17) holding an airline transport pilot licence and type rating for large multi engine aircraft were invited to participate in a simulator experiment where they would learn a new autopilot system. The low-pressure group flew a series of training scenarios under no performance pressure whereas the high-pressure group flew the same training scenarios with prompts designed to induce performance pressure and raise their anxiety. It was hypothesised that the high-pressure group would be less incentivised to explore different functions of the autopilot due to the performance pressure, therefore leading to a lower quality of training which would be reflected in poorer knowledge of the autopilot system. Ultimately, whilst the high-pressure group did in fact undergo training with a significantly higher state anxiety. This was found to have no significant effect on their behaviour during training or their performance in a test scenario. The findings also suggest that the experiment would benefit from being repeated with more guidance given during training and more constrained scenarios to reduce the variation in the data.

Supervisor: M.M. van Paassen