Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2009
City
Dayton
Abstract
In the aviation human factors literature, situation awareness (SA) is usually described as arising from disembodied mental processes. Action has virtually no role in current theories of SA. This disembodied view is out of step with contemporary theories that take cognitive processes to be distributed, situated, and above all, embodied. This shift in theory suggests that SA ought to be an embodied phenomenon, and given the highly spatial nature of SA, it would be quite surprising to discover that the body did not play a key role in the construction, elaboration, and maintenance of SA. In this paper we examine the construction of elements of SA in ongoing flight training conducted in a light jet. We show that flight instructors and students make extensive use of their bodies and the relations of their bodies to surrounding space while constructing, remembering, and reasoning about the situation of the airplane.
Repository Citation
Hutchins, E.,
Newsome, W.,
& Middleton, C.
(2009). Conceptualizing Spatial Relations in Flight Training. 2009 International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, 449-454.
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/isap_2009/41
