Eye-tracking and Individual Differences in off-Normal Event Detection when Flying with a Synthetic Vision System Display

Abstract

Eye-tracking data were collected on eight pilots who flew a high fidelity flight simulator with a synthetic vision system (SVS) display, which included a tunnel-in-the-sky in half of the experimental conditions. In this paper, we examined the individual pilots' detection and response to two unexpected events, where the true information was inaccurately (or not) represented on the SVS display. The results indicate that the pilots who failed to detect these unexpected events spent most of their time scanning the SVS display, which included the tunnel, and rarely scanned the outside world. The pilot who detected the unexpected events showed scan patterns with a more even distribution of scans to the SVS, the outside world, and other displays even when the tunnel was present. This suggests that detection of unexpected in-the-world events depends on the individual pilot's vigilance in maintaining a regular scan pattern and resistance to “cognitively tunneling” into only one display.