title: Remembrance of cases past: who remembers what, when confronting critical flight events?
abstract: Recent "naturalistic" theories of decision making emphasize the role of stored prior experiences or cases as a guide to current action. However, there is little empirical evidence on the role that case-based remindings play in real-life decision making. The present study utilized a Web-based survey to collect data about the role of prior cases in pilot decision making about critical flight events. Results showed that more than half of the 1081 pilots who responded could provide details about utilizing a previous case in responding to a critical flight event. These events were most likely to involve weather or equipment failure. The cases were found to be useful in situational assessment rather than option evaluation. The use of cases increased with age and experience. Data obtained from a concurrent conventional survey showed broadly similar results. The implications of these results are that case-based remindings play an important role in expert pilot decision making and that a training system that incorporates case-based learning would be a potentially useful means of improving pilot decision making. Actual or potential applications of this research include the development of case-based training systems to enhance flight training.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. ohare@psy.otago.ac.nz
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: O'Hare
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wiggins
mesh_terms: D001359:Aviation; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D011939:Mental Recall; D012449:Safety