| Dynamic Spatial Ability (DSA) can cover the following three aspects: firstly, estimating where a moving dot is going and when it will reach its predicted destination; secondly, an individual's reaction to and treatment of moving elements; thirdly, a new direction in the research on spatial abilities. On the basis of literature review, through experimental studies and correlation studies, the dissertation systematically investigated the advantage of airline pilots at constructing the dynamic spatial representation of the moving object, explored the object factors and background factors that could influence the construction of dynamic spatial representation, and examined the prediction ability for the dynamic spatial abilities to predict the flight performance of airline pilots.Research 1 investigated the object influence factors of the relative arrival time tasks (RAT), and the superiority of the cognitive processing of airline pilots.Adopting Pelleggrino's relative arrival time judgment task, Experiment la explored the processing levels of DSA of civil aviation pilots, flight cadets and common college students. Results indicated that in terms of the object moving characteristics, all the subjects were good at judging the moving objects that moved from left to right (from west to east) on the display screen, while they were poor at judging the moving objects that moved from right to left(from east to west). For the coordinate judgment tasks in dynamic spatial area, compared with two other groups of subjects, the group of airline pilots turned out to be better at judging the objects moving from right to left. Airline pilots had absolute advantages at the relative arrival time judgment task, either from left to right, or from right to left. For the coordinate judgment tasks in dynamic spatial area, the task performance of the flight cadets was better than that of the college students, which was mainly reflected in the traditional left-to-right task processing. This showed that to some extent the current selection of flight cadets could reflect the candidates' processing abilities of numeric judgment task. In terms of the judgment of the relative arrival time, the judgment performance of the flight cadets was not significantly better than that of the college students. At the same time, the judgment performance of the flight cadets was inferior to that of the airline pilots. The preceding facts indicated that in the current selection of flight cadets, the detection of the relevant task had not been emphasized and introduced.Adopting a variation of RAT created in the current research, Experiment 1b further investigated the object influence factors of this task, while exploring the processing advantage of civil aviation pilots. Results indicated that the combination factors of object size-object speed could influence the judgment of the relative arrival time, i.e., when large objects moved at the high speed and when small objects moved at the low speed, it would be easier to distinguish their relative arrival time. Moreover, it was found out that the moving direction of an object could influence the judgment of the relative arrival time: the moving direction that maintained a certain angle with the visual axis would make it more difficult to judge the moving time. Through comparing the group of airline pilots and the control group, the judgment performance of the airline pilots was better. Furthermore, such advantage could be mainly reflected in the moving directions that were different from the visual axis direction. The pilot judgment of the relative arrival time of the two moving objects already could not be influenced by the object size and the object direction.Adopting a variation of RAT created in the current study, Research 2 investigated the influences of the background factors upon the task, while exploring the processing advantage of the airline pilots. Results indicated that under the bad-distributed spatial background that could change the properties among objects, the judgment performance was inferior to the corresponding performance under the well-distributed spatial background with common visual noise. Moreover, compared with the non-background condition, the preceding two background conditions were detrimental to judgment. In subject comparison, results showed that under any kind of background condition, the judgment performance of airline pilots was better than that of control-group members, which could indicate the pilots' superiority in judging the relative arrival time of the two dots. Although the judgment performance of airline pilots was also affected in the bad-distributed space, it was more difficult for the control group to judge the relative moving time of the moving dots in the bad-distributed space. Compared with the members from the control groups, the airline pilots would find it easier to extract the motion information of the target object under the conditions of visual noise and bad-distributed spatial background.Adopting the spatial location dynamic test created in the current research, Research 3 examined the construction quality of the immediate dynamic spatial representation with the group of airline pilots and the control group. It was found out that airline pilots were good at the location response of dynamic spatial representation. Through controlling the interval time before reaction, the quality of dynamic spatial representation was found to decrease with the passage of time. Such influence was stronger for the control group.Adopting the Spatial Orientation Dynamic Test-Revised (SODT-R), Research 4 compared the group of airline pilots and the control group. Among the five reaction variable indices, results indicated that compared with the control-group members, airline pilots were better at controlling the directions of moving dots, which could be reflected in the rapid mastering of direction control and the prompt adjustment of dot-moving-directions. The longer response latency used by pilots to weigh the operation was, the lower response frequency in the process of operation would be. Results indicated that the pilots' high directional abilities in spatial task could be manifested as the trade-off strategy that was globally and dynamically mastered while completing the task.Adopting the Ball Flight Task (BFT), Research 5 investigated the characteristics of visuo-spatial processing in dynamic working memory with the group of airline pilots and the control group. Results showed that airline pilots were good at the global perception-memory-recognition of the dynamic working memory of the moving-dot-motion-trajectory. While accomplishing the dynamic working memory of motion trajectory, airline pilots preferred a more global strategy, while the control-group members preferred the retention of the segments of the trajectory.Through investigating the relationship between the dynamic spatial ability of airline pilots and the corresponding flight performance, Research 6 explored the way in which dynamic spatial abilities could predict the flight skills. Research showed that the pilots who were rated higher in their flight skills tended to make fewer errors in the spatial location dynamic test; the longer response latency and the lower response frequency in the spatial location dynamic test were, the more accurate responses in visuo-spatial processing task in dynamic working memory would be.The results of the preceding five studies indicated that airline pilots were good both at combining stimulation elements and at integrating and transforming object representation into global representation. Such integration advantage was manifested as the construction of immediate dynamic spatial representation in Research 1, Research 2 and Research 3, while manifested as the mastery of postponed dynamic spatial representation in Research 4 and Research 5. And the results of Research 6 could reflect that the airline pilots with high flight skills were good at Situation Awareness.Generally speaking, the concept entitled "immediate dynamic spatial representation" in the motion space was raised in the current dissertation, showing that in an accurate and clear way, individuals could globally master the positional relationship and the numeric/distance relationship of the immediate objects in the motion space. Moreover, the brand-new concept entitled "postponed dynamic spatial representation" was put forward to manifest the individuals' global mastery over the motion trajectory representation of the moving objects. Furthermore, superiority models of the pilot construction of the dynamic spatial representation were summarized, showing that the pilot advantages at the construction of the dynamic spatial representation could be manifested in the following two aspects: immediate dynamic spatial representation and postponed dynamic spatial representation. The pilot advantage at the construction of the dynamic spatial representation could be classified into the advantage at Situation Awareness. The results of all these studies in this dissertation will be of great significance to modeling of airline pilots' selection and training.
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