SEQUENCES OF ACTIONS FOR INDIVIDUAL AND TEAMS OF AIR-TRAFFIC-CONTROLLERS

Air traffic controllers participated in high-fidelity simulations of e n route air traffic, either singly or with a second team member. The o bserved stream of time-stamped behaviors and communication events was analyzed using the Pathfinder scaling algorithm, which provides a dire ctional graph of the latent structure in the data. The graphs were fou nd to be similar across levels of traffic complexity, and the triggers for frequently co-occurring activities were equivalent for the indivi duals and the teams. This suggests that numerous aspects of air traffi c control performance are robust and transcend some powerful situation al variables. The implications for interface design and automation are discussed.