Simulations in aviation and medicine: Cognitive and motivational factors influencing use in training

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Simulations in aviation and medicine Cognitive
and motivational factors influencing use in
training

• presented by
• Dr Lisa Wise
• Cognitive scientist / educational technologist
  BASE Study, Defence Science and Technology
  Organisation
• Honorary Research FellowMUVES Project, The
  University of Melbourne

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Cross-disciplinary research background

• cognitive neuroscience researcher
• neural mechanisms of sensory motor integration
• neuroethology and multimodal spatial coding
• sensory adaptions in different species (predator
  versus prey)
• psychology teaching
• perception, cognition, communication
• motivation and emotion
• skill acquisition
• educational technologist specialising in online
  learning
• project management / web database applications

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MUVES

• Melbourne University Virtual Environments for
  Simulation
• The MUVES research program is grounded in a
  cognitive science approach to the education and
  training utility of high fidelity virtual reality
  simulations and other forms of interactive
  technology. Underpinning this program of research
  are core questions about how humans process
  information and how different types of knowledge
  is represented.
• funded by the University of Melbourne Strategic
  Research Innovation Fund

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BASE Study

• Balance in the mix of Aircraft and Synthetic
  Environments for early flight training
• The BASE study reviews the psychological and
  educational basis on which decisions regarding
  use of synthetic training devices in early pilot
  training should be made
• contract research for the Defence Science and
  Technology Organisation

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Outline

• Simulations What are they?
• static versus dynamic models, emulations,
  synthetic environments,
• Simulations Why use them?
• cost reduction, risk mitigation, generating
  abnormal conditions
• Fidelity and level of abstraction
• types of fidelity, types of models, purpose of
  simulation
• Mental models and cognitive understanding
• novice versus expert, procedural vs conceptual,
  decision-making
• Training continuum
• basic vs advanced training, end-point of
  training, dealing with complexity
• Organisational factors
• cost-benefit, contractor / vendor /
  organisational dynamics

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Simulations What are they

• dynamic models (theoretical / empirical)
• verification, validation and accreditation of
  models
• emulations, simulations, synthetic environments,
  VR

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Issues with computer modelling

• The World as a Process Simulations in the
  Natural and Social Sciences (Stephan Hartmann)
• That is the dilemma of using computers in
  science People no longer spend that much time
  thinking about simple treatments but just
  complicate the model in order to increase its
  empirical adequacy.
• We need independent evidence for the terms
  involved A simulation is no better than the
  assumptions build into it.
• Every term in the model has to be interpreted
  thoroughly.
• There is no understanding of a process without a
  detailed understanding of the individual
  contributions to the dynamic model. Curve fitting
  and adding more and more ad hoc terms simply
  doesnt do the job.

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Issues with computer modelling

• The World as a Process Simulations in the
  Natural and Social Sciences (Stephan Hartmann)
• There is still another (psychological) problem
  with many realistic simulations which fit all
  data well. They make us forget that as always in
  science idealizations and approximations were
  involved in deriving the model.
• A serious appraisal of computer simulation has
  to pay attention to this fact.

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Virtual reality - answers.com

• A computer simulation of a real or imaginary
  system that enables a user to perform operations
  on the simulated system and shows the effects in
  real time
• In scientific and engineering research, virtual
  environments are used to visually explore
  whatever physical world phenomenon is under
  study. Training personnel for work in dangerous
  environments or with expensive equipment is best
  done through simulation. Airplane pilots, for
  example, train in flight simulators. Virtual
  reality can enable medical personnel to practice
  new surgical procedures on simulated individuals.
  As a form of entertainment, virtual reality is a
  highly engaging way to experience imaginary
  worlds and to play games. Virtual reality also
  provides a way to experiment with prototype
  designs for new products.

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Training aids
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Early Flight Simulators - Link Trainers (1929)
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QANTAS 747 Flight Simulator
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CSIRO Haptic workbench - VR for surgery

• The task one surgeon leading the other through
  the concepts involved in a surgical procedure
• Tools shared virtual reality model of the
  anatomy, shared haptic interaction with that
  model, 3D annotation tools, ancillary shared
  video of the actual procedure, shared annotatable
  X-ray display of an actual patient.
• Each surgeon had an immersive haptic workbench
  fitted with camera, small video display and
  microphone/speaker for audio communication. The
  audio was also broadcast to the
  audience. SimTec, T2004

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Laproscopic surgery

• new context for existing surgical skills
• actual task requires visualisation via computer
  screen

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CRM / Scenarios / Missions

• David Gaba, an anaesthetist, and his group at
  Stanford University USA recognised the
  similarities between pilots and Anaesthetists and
  adapted the aviation industry's Crew Resource
  Management training to the field of anaesthesia
  and named it Anaesthesia Crisis Resource
  Management (ACRM).

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Simulations Why use them?

• cost reduction
• high cost / low availability of real life
  situation (aircraft availability / air space,
  operating theatres / patients)
• risk mitigation
• high risk procedures, emergency situations
• generating abnormal conditions
• low probability situations
• what-ifs
• weather / missions / operating conditions

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Fidelity and levels of abstraction

• types of fidelity
• types of models
• purpose of simulation
• some examples

AVIATION MEDICINE
visual flying temporal bone surgery
instrument flying laproscopic surgery
missions surgical theatre
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Components of skill acquisition

• Cognitive component
• nature of skill-to-be-acquired is captured
• Perceptual learning component
• environmental information is explored such that
  task-relevant and task-irrelevant cues are
  identified
• Response learning component
• specific skill-related behavioural responses are
  acquired
• Mapping - sequencing component
• appropriate cues and responses are linked
  together
• Performance component
• skilled behaviour is enacted

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Selective factors In Perceptual Learning
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Optical illusions

• Optical illusion sounds pejorative, as if
  exposing a malfunction of the visual system.
  Rather, I view these phenomena as bringing out
  particular good adaptations of our visual system
  to standard viewing situations. These adaptations
  are hard-wired in our brains, and thus under
  some artificial manipulations can cause
  inappropriate interpretations of the visual
  scene.
• As Purkinje put it Illusions of the senses
  tell us the truth about perception (cited by
  Teuber, 1960).
• Michael Bach http//www.michaelbach.de/ot/

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Colour afterimage
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Colour afterimage
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Colour afterimage
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Rotating snake - luminance effects
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Mach bands - contrast effects at boundaries
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Necker cube - depth ambiguity
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Illusory motion of illusory contours

• The illusory square appears to move from one
  position to the other.
• Two image frames are used to create the illusion
  of motion. The motion is induced by swapping
  quickly between the two frames.
• The squares themselves are also an illusion, as
  they have no real boundaries, but are mentally
  constructed from interpolating between aligned
  boundaries.

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Hidden figures
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Hidden figures
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Church of Sant'Ignazio di Loyola (17th C)
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Fidelity and immersive capacity

• The immersive potential of a synthetic
  environment is dependent on
• the validity of stimulus cues
• the willingness of the protagonist to suspend
  disbelief to the extent of accepting the premises
  of the simulation and overlooking known
  limitations of the medium
• sufficient domain knowledge available to
  protagonist from which to construct the illusory
  or missing aspects of the synthetic environment
• Method of illusion generation must not impact
  detrimentally on learning outcomes required of
  the training task
• calibration by expert does not mean that the
  correct underlying cues are present for
  generating responses

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Information processing approach (eg Neisser, 1967)
Perceptual processes
Decision-making and response selection
Response programming and execution
Motor learning approach (eg Fitts, 1964, Keele,
1973)
1 Understanding skill requirement (observation,
verbal / written instructions)
2 Associative stage (movement refined, errors
reduced, verbalisations reduced)
3 Autonomous stage (develop automaticity or
reflex)
Ecological approach (eg Newell, 1986)
task
Control
Coordination
Skill
perception
Goal-directed behaviour
organism
constraints
environment
action
(Adapted from Summers, 2004)
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Dynamic coordination and control

• Coordination strategies align organism with
  environment to achieve a task
• Alignment driven by search plus selection under
  constraint
• constraints of task and environment
• Tasks and skills
• macro level comprising micro level subsystems
• Limits of motor coordination
• constraints on process (freezing degrees of
  freedom of movement)
• constraints on outcome (constraining goal to
  tighter and tighter performance criteria)
• Increasing coordination decreases degrees of
  freedom on outcome rather than on specifics of
  how outcome is achieved

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Role of instructor

• The role of the instructor or coach is
• to ensure the correct discovery environment
  through the manipulation of task and
  environmental constraints in an attempt to guide
  exploration of the dynamics of the
  perceptuo-motor workspace if one uses the
  metaphor of a story to conceptualise the skill
  acquisition process in sport, then the end-state
  form (the skill) to be acquired by each
  individual is not proscribed at the outset, but
  is painstakingly and creatively written
  ongoingly.

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Effects of constraints on training

• Directed coaching or synthetic training
  environments with limited dimensionality will
  only support a very narrow search process
• Unbounded workspaces allow unconstrained search
  which can unrewarding, inefficient and
  potentially unsafe
• Generalised textbook approaches provide neatly
  packaged temporary solutions for immediate
  performance effects in specific environments
• Unique relationships between movement subsystems
  which influence long term performance transfer to
  novel situations will not be established in early
  learning

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Mental models and cognitive understanding

• novice versus expert
• procedural versus conceptual
• decision making

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Simulations in the training continuum

• basic versus advanced training
• desired end-point of training
• dealing with complexity
• continuous versus discrete time scales
• rate of learning
• temporal flow
• motivational factors of time pressure
• Competency-based model versus master-apprentice
  observational learning model?

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Rate of learning / Spare cognitive capacity
Some parameters Rate-of-learning Technical
competence Spare capacity cognitive
psychomotor Sequencing / flow procedural
chunking Sensory-motor memory
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Organisational factors

• cost - benefit to whom?
• contractor gt vendor gt organisational dynamics
• Cross-disciplinary teams often share terminology
  at the surface level which does not translate to
  shared understanding at the deep level the same
  terminology means different things