ABSTRACT

Objective

To study how stress affects the performance of student pilots under highly demanding conditions, during flight simulator sessions.

Background

Pilots usually suffer stress under highly demanding conditions. This can affect performance to such an extent that the human factor is the main cause of aviation accidents. Stress has not been studied recently in student pilots.

Method

We used a wristband to record in real-time the Electrodermal Activity (EDA, a reliable indicator of stress) of student pilots during several flight simulator sessions. Experienced flight instructors graded their performance during these flights. The sessions were split into different tasks to focus only on performance and EDA in Highly Demanding Tasks (HDTs).

Results

We found that students have higher EDA when correctly performing an HDT. Furthermore, we observed low EDA in students who perform well on the session as a whole but perform poorly on one particular HDT.

Conclusion

The study indicates that high levels of stress are related to high performance at high levels of demand. We also observe that students (although they may perform well on the session as a whole) poorly performed a highly demanding task, during which they showed low levels of stress. We suggest that this could be due to fatigue, a lack of motivation, level of skills, or even overconfidence, all of which are variables that should be assessed in future work.

中文翻译：

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压力对学生飞行员高要求任务表现的影响

摘要

目的

在飞行模拟器课程中研究压力如何在苛刻的条件下影响学生飞行员的表现。

背景

飞行员通常会在苛刻的条件下承受压力。这可能会影响性能，以至于人为因素是航空事故的主要原因。压力尚未在学生飞行员中得到研究。

方法

我们使用腕带实时记录了几次飞行模拟器课程中学生飞行员的皮肤电活动（EDA，一种可靠的压力指标）。经验丰富的飞行教练会在这些飞行中对他们的表现进行评分。这些会议分为不同的任务，仅专注于高要求任务（HDT）中的性能和EDA。

结果

我们发现，正确执行HDT时，学生的EDA较高。此外，我们观察到在整个课程中表现良好但在某项HDT上表现较差的学生的EDA较低。

结论

研究表明，高压力与高需求水平下的高性能有关。我们还观察到，学生（尽管他们可能在整个会话中表现良好）却没有完成一项要求很高的任务，在此期间他们表现出较低的压力。我们建议，这可能是由于疲劳，缺乏动力，技能水平乃至过度自信所致，所有这些都是将来工作中应评估的变量。