Aviator performance in week-long extended flight operations in a helicopter simulator

Psychological, physiological, and biochemical correlates of aviator crew performance, stress, and fatigue were measured in a week-long flight schedule in a helicopter simulator. Three two-man crews of rotary wing aviators performed 14 h of precision instrument flight on each of 4 successive days and 10 h on the 5th day. Missions involved repetitions of 2-h standardized day and night flight profiles that were occasionally interrupted by simulated emergencies. Aviator performance measures included meeting assigned airspeeds, altitudes, headings, turn rates, and navigation requirements. Pilots slept 4 h each night. Baseline data were collected prior to, and recovery data after, the extended flight schedule. Pilots maintained simulator flight parameters to within acceptable tolerances of assigned headings, airspeeds, and altitudes, even into the morning of the 4th day of the schedule. However, cognitive and judgmental errors were made. Even though flight surgeons deemed them unsafe to fly by the 3rd night, pilots continued to fly well to the 5th day.     

Unconscious transfer of meaning to brands

We examine semantic conditioning in a consumer context. We subliminally paired neutral ideographs with attributes. In experiment 1, the ideographs served as primes during a lexical decision task and slowed down response times to target words with the opposite semantic meaning. In experiment 2, the ideographs served as brand names of beverages, and attitudinal responses to them were less favorable when the associated attributes were incongruent with existing schemas. These results showed that semantic conditioning (1) can occur unconsciously, (2) can have significant and meaningful consequences for brand evaluation, and (3) influences subsequent attitudinal responses via conceptual disfluency processes.     

Affect influences false memories at encoding: evidence from recognition data

Memory is susceptible to illusions in the form of false memories. Prior research found, however, that sad moods reduce false memories. The current experiment had two goals: (1) to determine whether affect influences retrieval processes, and (2) to determine whether affect influences the strength and the persistence of false memories. Happy or sad moods were induced either before or after learning word lists designed to produce false memories. Control groups did not experience a mood induction. We found that sad moods reduced false memories only when induced before learning. Signal detection analyses confirmed that sad moods induced prior to learning reduced activation of nonpresented critical lures suggesting that they came to mind less often. Affective states, however, did not influence retrieval effects. We conclude that negative affective states promote item-specific processing, which reduces false memories in a similar way as using an explicitly guided cognitive control strategy.     

Use of the RoboFlag synthetic task environment to investigate workload and stress responses in UAV operation

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is an increasingly important element of military missions. However, controlling UAVs may impose high stress and workload on the operator. This study evaluated the use of the RoboFlag simulated environment as a means for profiling multiple dimensions of stress and workload response to a task requiring control of multiple vehicles (robots). It tested the effects of two workload manipulations, environmental uncertainty (i.e., UAV’s visual view area) and maneuverability, in 64 participants. The findings confirmed that the task produced substantial workload and elevated distress. Dissociations between the stress and performance effects of the manipulations confirmed the utility of a multivariate approach to assessment. Contrary to expectations, distress and some aspects of workload were highest in the low-uncertainty condition, suggesting that overload of information may be an issue for UAV interface designers. The strengths and limitations of RoboFlag as a methodology for investigating stress and workload responses are discussed.