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The Role of Memory in Air Traffic Controller ErrorProblem
The air traffic control environment places a complex set of cognitive demands on the controller. A significant component of the job is dynamic scheduling in which future actions are planned in a constantly evolving airspace. This creates the opportunity for controller errors that result from failing to execute intended actions at appropriate times or from failing to appreciate the implications of an action. Such failures of situation awareness have been cited as a causal factor in several incidents including a much publicized accident in Los Angeles where the controller cleared a plane to land on the same runway as another plane awaiting takeoff. These failures can be linked to failures to recall the intended action or current state of the dynamic system. In the psychological literature these are errors of memory which causes ranging from inattention to relevant variables to impoverished retrieval cues.
Objectives
The primary objective of this research is to understand the factors in the air traffic control environment which affect the incidence of memory failures. The near-term goal is to understand the mental processing demands that lead to specific controller errors cited in incident reports. The far-term objective is to have a theoretical account of how such errors arise that can be applied to system design.
Approach
The project will commence with a survey of the literature on controller error. Incidents will be analyzed to expose the nature of the memory demands. A theory of memory will be sought or developed that will provide a means of explaining how such errors were generated. This effort will also involve laboratory experimentation. Field studies will be conducted in parallel to begin to understand controller memory performance in actual practice.
Accomplishments
The ASRS data base has been searched for incidents in which memory has been cited as a causal factor. The resulting reports have been analyzed and are being evaluated against existing models of memory. We are currently conducting a broader search for all types of controller error and exploring the psychological literature for theories that provide more useful accounts.
Future Plans
Field tests are planned for later this year. A preliminary paper is being drafted that reports the results of our initial examination of incident reports. We are exploring ways to link this effort with fatigue countermeasures effort which has been active at ARC for some years.
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