title: Environmental support for older and younger pilots' comprehension of air traffic control information.
abstract: We investigated whether expertise mitigates age differences on pilot communication tasks when experts rely on environmental support. Pilots and nonpilots listened to air traffic control messages describing a route through an airspace, during which they referred to a chart of the airspace. The routes were high (waypoint routes anchored to navigational reference points on the chart) or low (vector routes that were not) in contextual support. Participants read back messages and answered questions about aircraft position (which required integration of message and chart information) or altitude (which did not). Pilots more accurately answered questions. The expertise advantage for position, but not altitude, questions was greater for waypoint routes, showing differential use of environmental support by experts. Age did not moderate these effects.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Aviation and the Beckman Institute, University of Illnois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. dgm@uiuc.edu
authors.forename: Daniel G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Morrow
authors.forename: Lisa M Soederberg
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Heather E
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Ridolfo
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Menard
authors.forename: Elizabeth A L
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Stine-Morrow
authors.forename: Cliff
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Magnor
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D001359:Aviation / Q000379:methods*; D003071:Cognition; D003142:Communication; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D014825:Vocabulary