Influence of Anxiety and Mental Workload on Flight performance in a Flight Simulator

Abstract

The variation of cognitive workload (CW) can considerably impact the probability of human error due to distraction, mind-wandering or cognitive resources overload 1. Besides, a high level of anxiety can provoke dangerous situations when pilots are not able to take control ensuring total precision and safety. The objective of this work is to assess whether state-anxiety, generated by a social stressor, affects flight performance when the CW varies. Methodology Nineteen participants (22.7 ± 3.8 years) were included in our analysis. All of them were in possession of the Private Pilot License, having at least a flying experience of 50 flight hours (141.3 ± 139.5 hours). The experiment took place in an AL-50 simulator and consisted in a dual-task scenario which required the simultaneous accomplishment of a pre-established flight plan and a secondary task. A previous training consisting in a similar dual task scenario was carried out. The established flight scenario lasted approximately 35 minutes, including a 24-minutes cruise phase. A strict timing for the flight instructions was specified. Speed (measured in knots), heading (degrees) and altitude (m) parameters were collected during the simulations (sampling rate of 1Hz). To evaluate the performance, any deviation greater than ± 5 units from the requested flight parameter was counted as an error.