Distributed Cognition and Reality ─ How Pilots and Crews Make Decisions

In the aviation environment, judgement and decision-making in the handling of emergency situations is usually the factor that determines whether or not an incident turns into an accident. The benefit of hindsight allows labels of ’human error’ or ’poor decision-making’ to be applied to the decision output. What should be sought by researchers and accident investigators is an understanding of the local rationality of operators via their decision-making process, in order to establish why actions and assessments made sense to the operator at the time they were made. This book explores aeronautical critical decision-making through the Perceptual Cycle Model (PCM). The PCM describes the reciprocal, cyclical, relationship that exists between operators and their work environment, depicting the interaction between internally held mental schemata and externally available environmental information in making decisions and actions. The reader is first introduced to Distributed Cognition and Schema Theory: a central, but controversial, element of the PCM. Following this, a case-study analysis of the Kegworth plane crash exemplifies the theory. Through critical-incident interviews conducted in rotary wing aviation, Distributed Cognition and Reality demonstrates how the PCM can explain local rationality. A new method has been developed and validated to assist in the elicitation and analysis of critical decisions. The book also applies the PCM to the study of teams within a search and rescue context, demonstrating how teams function in a distributed perceptual cycle. The concluding chapter discusses the findings in light of their theoretical, methodological and practical applications. Relevant readerships for this work include researchers, academics, practitioners and students in human factors, ergonomics, engineering and aviation. The book will also have broad appeal to anyone involved in training and evaluating pilot decision-making, such as accident investigators and

Dr Katherine Plant has been working as a human factors researcher at the University of Southampton since 2009. During this time she has worked on a variety of European Union funded projects in the field of aviation human factors. This work has primarily focused on applying human factors methods in the development and evaluation of future cockpit concepts. Katherine has published a number of papers in peer-reviewed journals. In June 2015 Katherine was awarded a PhD in Human Factors from the University of Southampton, UK. The Honourable Company of Air Pilots awarded this work their Saul Prize for aviation safety research in May 2014. Professor Neville A Stanton, PhD, is both a Chartered Psychologist and a Chartered Engineer and holds the Chair in Human Factors in the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. He has degrees in Psychology, Applied Psychology and Human Factors and has worked at the Universities of Aston, Brunel, Cornell and MIT. His research interests include modelling, predicting and analysing human performance in transport systems as well as designing the interfaces between humans and technology. Professor Stanton has worked on cockpit design in automobiles and aircraft over the past 25 years, working on a variety of automation projects. He has published 30 books and over 200 journal papers on Ergonomics and Human Factors, and is currently an editor of the peer-reviewed journal Ergonomics. The Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors awarded him The Otto Edholm Medal in 2001, The President’s Medal in 2008 and The Sir Frederic Bartlett Medal in 2012 for his contribution to basic and applied ergonomics research. The Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him and his colleagues the Hodgson Prize and Bronze Medal in 2006 for research on design-induced flight-deck error published in The Aeronautical Journal. The University of Southampton awarded him a DSc in 2014 for his sustained contribution to the development and valid