The aim of this research is to use functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to compare and contrast brain activation for professional versus novice Tower Air Traffic Controllers when performing their daily tasks, whilst accounting for missed approaches. With functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy chosen due to its ability to continuously monitor brain activity for mobile participants in their workplace settings, increasing ecological validity, as well as being safe, inexpensive, and benefitting from low set-up times, resulting in excellent temporal resolution as well as superior spatial resolution over Electroencephalogram. If a significant difference in activation is observed between professional and novice ATCOs, the neuroimaging data can be used as a benchmark for future exploratory studies using the obtained neuroimaging data to serve as a reliable quantitative measure to track performance during Air Traffic Controller training, establishing a metric to distinguish novice from professional Air Traffic Controllers. Our hypothesis is that professional tower controllers will have a decrease in brain activation due to their experience. Contrastingly, novice tower controllers would have more extensive brain activation, given a lack of experience relying soley on training. Additionally, we expect to see a significant difference in sustained attention activation between professionals and novices. The tasks that the tower controllers will be expected to resolve will be a series of tower control duties that will be severely impacted by a range of factors that will intentionally make the successful performance of their duties strained.
The use of intelligent decision aids in Air Traffic Management is recommended to manage the exponential rise in global air traffic. Consequently, trust, which is one of the main drivers of how Air Traffic Controllers use such decision aids, has become an important area of research. It has been suggested that there is a strong emotional influence in the formation of Human-Human Trust, and it is unclear if this paradigm is valid for Human-Autonomy Trust. The extent of the cognitive and emotional components in the initial trust relationship between Air Traffic Controllers and a simulated conflict detection autonomous decision aid was examined with the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The results confirmed that the emotional component showed higher activation than the cognitive component for the initial formation of trust between Air Traffic Controllers and autonomous decision aids.
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