Abstract
Airline pilots and similar professions require reliable spatial cognition abilities, such as mental imagery of static and moving three-dimensional objects in space. A well-known task to investigate these skills is the Shepard and Metzler mental rotation task (SMT), which is also frequently used during pre-assessment of pilot candidates. Despite the intuitive relationship between real-life spatial cognition and SMT, several studies have challenged its predictive value. Here we report on a novel instrument interpretation task (IIT) based on a realistic attitude indicator used in modern aircrafts that was designed to bridge the gap between the abstract SMT and a cockpit environment. We investigated 18 professional airline pilots using fMRI. No significant correlation was found between SMT and IIT task accuracies. Contrasting both tasks revealed higher activation in the fusiform gyrus, angular gyrus, and medial precuneus for IIT, whereas SMT elicited significantly stronger activation in pre- and supplementary motor areas, as well as lateral precuneus and superior parietal lobe. Our results show that SMT skills per se are not sufficient to predict task accuracy during (close to) real-life instrument interpretation. While there is a substantial overlap of activation across the task conditions, we found that there are important differences between instrument interpretation and non-aviation based mental rotation.
Highlights
Various cognitive abilities such as mechanical comprehension and technical knowledge, numerical reasoning, short-term memory for auditory and visual information, speed of perception, attention control, reaction time, psychomotor coordination, multiple task capacity, and spatial orientation[6]
The present study investigated the neurobiological correlates of spatial cognition in professional airline pilots while either interpreting information displayed on a realistic attitude indicator or performing a generic mental rotation task (Shepard-Metzler task, SMT)
A high level of safety has been achieved in aviation due to continuous developments in flight systems and automation, procedures, as well as pilot training, accidents and incidents still occur and human factors such as loss of situation awareness (SA), and spatial SA, are reported as crucial in accident/incident reports[5]
Summary
Various cognitive abilities such as mechanical comprehension and technical knowledge, numerical reasoning, short-term memory for auditory and visual information, speed of perception, attention control, reaction time, psychomotor coordination, multiple task capacity, and spatial orientation[6]. When repeating the experiment at a later time, this gender difference was only observed for the abstract mental rotation paradigm, yet not for the driving task, where task performance was determined by the level of acquired driving experience, instead In combination, these findings raise the question if performance in a Shepard-Metzler-like mental rotation task represents the current skill level of real-life spatio-motor performance in a specific profession and its function as predictor for the future individual development resulting from training and experience. In this study we have designed and implemented an instrument interpretation (IIT) task that strongly resembles the attitude indicator, the main instrument used by pilots to determine the attitude of the aircraft and, is close to a pilot’s real-life requirements and affordances while still being highly comparable to the Shepard-Metzler task (SMT) for mental rotation with respect to the presentation of visual stimuli and subject responses by means of pressing one of two buttons (Fig. 1). We compared task performance and task-specific brain activations between both tasks to assess whether the SMT can be regarded a reliable tool to investigate aviation-relevant spatial cognition skills
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
