The Importance of Cognitive and Mental Factors on Prediction of Job Performance in Chinese High-Speed Railway Dispatchers

Abstract

High-speed railway (HSR) transportation poses a serious challenge to dispatchers, whose job performance plays a critical role for the safety and efficiency of the transportation system. This study examined the relationship between cognitive and mental factors and job performance among Chinese high-speed railway dispatchers and established a predictive model for the job performance of dispatchers. Cognitive abilities involved in train dispatching including working memory and multiobject tracking and potential related mental factors including depression, anxiety, perceived stress, and social support were examined. Job performances were measured by both subjective and objective indicators, i.e., the overall evaluation by supervisors and the delay time by dispatching simulator. Stepwise regression results showed that both cognitive abilities and 2 mental factors (depression and perceived stress) have strong relations with job performance, and tremendous distinction between groups of good and poor performance of HSR dispatchers is revealed. The predictive model accounted for 91% of the overall variance in objective performance indicator and has 96% distinguished accuracy of good and poor groups. These findings imply that cognitive and mental factors should be of great concern to the current practice of Chinese HSR dispatcher selection and management.

Attention Control Measures Improve the Prediction of Performance in Navy Trainees

“…Empirically, individual differences in attention control explain considerable variance in academic achievement (Ahmed et al, 2019;Blankenship et al, 2019;McVay and Kane, 2012), job performance (Nelson, 2003;Guo et al, 2020;Bosco et al, 2015), emotion regulation (Engen & Anderson, 2018;Garrison & Schmeichel, 2020;Moran, 2016), rationality , sensory discrimination ability (Tsukahara et al, 2020), and complex problem solving (Dempster, 1991;Draheim et al, 2021;Martin et al, 2020;Salthouse et al, 2003). For a review of the expansive role of attention control on complex behavior, see Draheim et al (2022).…”

Cognitive Abilities Predict Safety Performance: A Study Examining High-Speed Railway Dispatchers

“…A high-fidelity dispatch simulator [14] was used to measure train delay time. e dispatch simulator (Figure 7) was a replicate of real dispatch control systems used in Chinese HSR.…”

“…e analysis of HSR dispatchers' safety performance faces great challenges because of their highly complex work content and the lack of established research methods. Guo et al [14] (2020) proposed two measures to assess the safety performance of HSR dispatchers. One is the subjective evaluation given by supervisors, and the other is the objective delay time measured by a high-fidelity dispatch simulator.…”

“…Regarding HSR dispatchers, researchers only recently examined the relationship between dispatchers' cognitive abilities and safety performance [14]. Given the lack of relevant studies providing empirical evidence and the reality of the rapid growth of HSR, it is urgently necessary to examine the individual factors (e.g., cognitive abilities) of dispatchers' safety performance so as to form more efficient and effective selection and training systems of dispatchers [24,25].…”

“…When normal operation is interrupted by bad weather, train fault, or any other emergencies, dispatchers must adjust train schedules accordingly and issue dispatching orders to implement the updated plan to address a range of potentially hazardous situations. HSR dispatchers' job responsibilities can be grouped into four categories, namely, information collection, operation monitoring, scheduling, and emergency response [14]. As shown in Figure 1, the mostly involved cognitive abilities are logical reasoning, multiobject visual tracking, working memory, task switching, and cognitive flexibility.…”