Examining the Effects of Different Situation Awareness on Visual Performance and Error

Abstract

Pilots’ error mainly resulting from loss of situation awareness (SA) becomes a major threat to aviation safety. However, the relationship between errors and the three levels of situational awareness had been seldom stressed. This paper firstly calculated theoretical values of SA for three typical cognitive processes of information that are imperceptible, perceived, and understood on the basis of the Multi - level information trigger analysis of SA and the quantitative model of MIDAS. And based on the three different SA values were calculated, taxiing experiment was executed. SA had been considered as independent variables and pilots’ visual performance and errors were analyzed as dependent variables. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze if SA has significant effect on pilots’ error and visual performance, and correlative analysis was executed to determine if there is conclusive relationship between errors and visual performance. These results suggest that providing 100% information to a pilot does not mean zero error. In addition, the average saccade duration has a significant correlation with error rate, which can be used to as an error prediction indicator. By monitoring the pilots’ visual performance, the possibility of error can be predicted, and then occurrence of error may be avoided to improve the taxiing safety.