title: Pilots' visual scan patterns and situation awareness in flight operations.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Situation awareness (SA) is considered an essential prerequisite for safe flying. If the impact of visual scanning patterns on a pilot's situation awareness could be identified in flight operations, then eye-tracking tools could be integrated with flight simulators to improve training efficiency.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participating in this research were 18 qualified, mission-ready fighter pilots. The equipment included high-fidelity and fixed-base type flight simulators and mobile head-mounted eye-tracking devices to record a subject's eye movements and SA while performing air-to-surface tasks.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were significant differences in pilots' percentage of fixation in three operating phases: preparation (M = 46.09, SD = 14.79), aiming (M = 24.24, SD = 11.03), and release and break-away (M = 33.98, SD = 14.46). Also, there were significant differences in pilots' pupil sizes, which were largest in the aiming phase (M = 27,621, SD = 6390.8), followed by release and break-away (M = 27,173, SD = 5830.46), then preparation (M = 25,710, SD = 6078.79), which was the smallest. Furthermore, pilots with better SA performance showed lower perceived workload (M = 30.60, SD = 17.86), and pilots with poor SA performance showed higher perceived workload (M = 60.77, SD = 12.72). Pilots' percentage of fixation and average fixation duration among five different areas of interest showed significant differences as well.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Eye-tracking devices can aid in capturing pilots' visual scan patterns and SA performance, unlike traditional flight simulators. Therefore, integrating eye-tracking devices into the simulator may be a useful method for promoting SA training in flight operations, and can provide in-depth understanding of the mechanism of visual scan patterns and information processing to improve training effectiveness in aviation.
authors.forename: Chung-San
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Eric Min-Yang
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Wen-Chin
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Graham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Braithwaite
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000337:Aerospace Medicine; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001359:Aviation; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008889:Military Personnel; D011680:Pupil / Q000502:physiology; D013624:Taiwan; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D016526:Workload