Cockpit Task Management Bibliography
Cockpit Task Management Bibliography |
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| TITLE: | Flight Deck Task Management: A Cognitive Engineering Analysis |
| PUBLISHER: | Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 40th Annual Meeting, 1996 |
| KEYWORDS: | strategic, tactical |
| SUMMARY: | This was a cognitive analysis of extensive interviews with three retired pilots.
The interview consisted of having the pilots "think out loud" while
performing experimental tasks with index cards (not performed in a simulator). *** Identification of strategic and tactical TM dichotomy. *** In addition to the short report, I've also obtained the full report from Rogers. |
SIGNIFICANT CONCEPTS/EXCERPTS:
Normative Descriptions of CTM: assess situation, identify tasks, prioritize tasks, assess resources, allocate resources, schedule tasks, perform tasks, monitor tasks, manage interruptions. Normative description (a bunch of processes) and Operations description (only a few critical processes)
1) There is a very pronounced dichotomy in TM, referred to here as strategic and tactical. Pre-planning, building a mental model, monitoring, contingency planning, filling gaps with continuous and pre-planning items, and performing tasks early to avoid real and potential workload bottlenecks later, were used to describe TM activities when the flight is proceeding normally and there is little or no time pressure. Splitting duties (between the crew members), using a well-learned, well-rehearsed mental list of discrete items to be perform, doing time-critical, high priority items, operating in "real time," hurrying the pace of tasks, and deferring or dropping tasks, were used to describe TM activities when there was an emergency or time-pressured situation.
2) TM is driven by time. the overriding explicit TM process is scheduling or ordering tasks. The ordering is primarily urgency- and immediate event-driven for tactical TM, and workload management-driven for strategic TM.
3) Tasks are divided into discrete real time tasks, discrete pre-planning tasks, and continuous ore repetitive tasks. Discrete tasks are naturally ordered along a priority or time dimension and continuous tasks are interleaved with discrete tasks but are not explicitly ordered.
Strategic vs. Tactical TM – Tactical is more important?
Thesis:
In discussion:
Pilots reported that they consciously raised their resistance to interruptions during these periods. It is likely that many of the in-depth cognitive processes defined in the normative description of TM are abbreviated or eliminated during tactical TM. There is not enough time to devote cognitive resources to TM in light of the high workload related to performance of immediate tasks. This is likely on reason TM errors occur and automated TM aids would be useful.
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