Anticipation in dynamic systems

Abstract

Observations in simulator studies at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) during testing of future technologies in air traffic management systems led to the hypothesis that future pilots will be required more often to think anticipative, for improving capacities in airspaces with high air traffic density. A computer-based test DAT (Dynamic Anticipatory Test) was developed and tested for extracting the assumed latent construct anticipatory thinking. The item format resembles a CDTI-like (Cockpit Display of Traffic Information) display developed during earlier studies at NASA-Ames Research Center. The participant’s task was to anticipate the movements of discrete objects (aircrafts) on the screen. We used four parameters type (straight or curve) and length of movement (3 or 5 cm), number of aircrafts (1, 2 or 3) and anticipation time (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 seconds) resulting in a 2x2x3x5 design with 60 test items. A person’s score was calculated as the sum of the Euclidian distances between the predicted and the correct position of an aircraft. The study was conducted at the DLR with 73 trained pilots (3 female, mean age 29.85 years) with multiple hours of flying experience applying for a ready-entry position in an airline and 113 pilot applicants (39 female, mean age 19.26 years) mainly without flying experience applying for pilot apprenticeship. For testing if anticipatory thinking was already covered by existing aptitude tests and if the test could predict overall applicant’s success, scores were compared using correlations, regressions and t-tests. Results showed the DAT was suited to measure corresponding skill differences between applicants regarding anticipatory thinking. Split-Half reliability was very good with r = 0.94. Several significant correlations with existing DLR aptitude tests were computed (memory: 0.19 ≤ r ≤ 0.23; visual processing speed: r = 0.18; motor skills: r = 0.23). A significant difference between successful and unsuccessful applicants was found. In sum, the DAT showed promising results and further development should be pursued.