Expertise effect on gaze patterns, navigation accuracy, and subjective assessment in overland navigation on varying route difficulty

摘要

Helicopter overland navigation is a cognitively complex task that requires continuous monitoring of system and environment parameters and many hours of training to master. This study investigated the effect of expertise on pilots’ gaze measurements, navigation accuracy, and subjective assessment of their navigation accuracy in overland navigation on easy and difficult routes. Methods: Twelve military officers who ranged in flight experience, as measured by total flight hours (TFH) completed a simulated overland task. They first completed map study of a route including easy and difficult route sections, and then had to ‘fly’ this simulated route in a fixed-based, helicopter simulator. They also completed pre-task estimations and post-task assessments of how hard it would be to navigate to each waypoint in the route. Their scan pattern was tracked via two eye tracking systems. The tracking systems captured both the subject’s out-the-window (OTW) and topographical map scan data. Results: TFH was marginally correlated with navigation accuracy only for the easy routes, and was not associated with RMS error for either leg. For the easy routes, experts spent less time scanning out the window, yet had as many fixations as less expert pilots. For the difficult routes, experts appeared to slow down their scan by spending as much time scanning out the window as the novices, while also having fewer overall fixations and MAP fixations. However, TFH was not significantly correlated with more accurate estimates of route difficulty.