Augmentation of the Basic Attributes with Tests of Temporal Acuity

Our industrialized society places a premium on the visually-based ability to resolve fine-spatial detail in the environment. But the perceptual demands of new aircraft display systems, and indeed the tasks of out-the-window performances (landing, low-level attack, etc.) in aviation may involve temporal acuity (e.g., motion perception) as much as spatial acuity. Further, an inability to "switch" attention and fixation rapidly from one visual display to another is more likely related to temporal than spatial visual systems and may be a major factor in the aviation "human error" component. We hypothesize that individuals differ in their temporal visual accuity and, if so, then measures which tap this capability could be predictive of success in flight training as well as aviation operational performance. There is a large literature devoted to temporal factors in vision, and there is neurophysiological evidence that independent retino-cortical pathways are used for motion perception. flicker, and meta contrast when compared to color vision and fine-line acuity. So far as we know, there are no direct measures of temporal acuity which are used as selection criteria for pilots. In Phase I, we propose to implement a battery of such tests on a computer and determine whether performance on such tests is: (a) reliable enough to be a suitable predictor, (b) uncorrelated with other existing aptitude measures, and (c) uncorrelated with existing tests of spatial acuity.