title: Effects of deliberate practice on crisis decision performance.
abstract: This study examined the impact of deliberate practice on pilot decision making in once-in-a-career crisis decision scenarios. First we explored the impact of deliberate practice on pilot decision-making performance for crisis flying scenarios that had been practiced in their entirety. Then we looked at the impact of deliberate practice in which one aspect of the crisis scenario--the particular malfunction--was unpracticed. We analyzed pilot decision-making performance in response to 160 airborne mechanical malfunctions. We initially found that deliberate practice significantly improves decision-making performance for wholly practiced crises but does not improve decision-making performance when the specific malfunction has not been practiced. We then split decision making for each crisis into two phases: assessment and action selection. For wholly practiced crisis scenarios, additional deliberate practice positively impacts each decision-making phase. However, for part-practiced scenarios, deliberate practice appears to differentially affect phase of error. Specifically, pilots with more deliberate practice erred in action selection, whereas less-practiced pilots erred in assessment. Actual or potential applications of this research include training proscriptions for crisis decision making.
authors.affiliation: 324 College of Business, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA. emckinn@cba.bgsu.edu
authors.forename: Earl H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: McKinney
authors.forename: Kevin J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Davis
mesh_terms: D000060:Accidents, Aviation / Q000517:prevention & control*; D000337:Aerospace Medicine; D000401:Aircraft; D003419:Crisis Intervention; D003657:Decision Making; D004190:Disasters; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis