Thanks for the interesting case studies. Continually over controlling the
thrust on the A300's manual throttles and forgetting use of the go-levers,
and driving different cars are nice examples of interference from prior
learning.
The fact that the Flight Engineer's reprimand brought you back to conscious
awareness and control and you have not repeated the error, Mike, simply
means that he (or his replacement) is now acting as a cue for your correct
performance. If he were not there you may well find yourself reverting to
the incorrect/sub-optimal performance, at least on those occasions when you
are not consciously aware of all your actions and acting automatically.
When the conscious awareness is with you, however, all will be fine because
you will choose your appropriate response rather than your inappropriate
response. However, *both* responses are still with you - the inappropriate
response has not gone away!
It's difficult to "explain" your transitioning experiences without knowing
you and your background better. The series of Old Way/New Way steps I
described and which you enumerated are, of course, gross simplifications of
what typically goes on. The error diagnosis is often quite involved and
subtle; teaching the differences between the old and the new ways is also a
highly individualistic process with its own clearly defined steps; and
similarly for the rest of the entire procedure. I'm not trying to
deliberately mystify any of this; that's just the way it is. You would say
the same about your own performance as a highly experienced and skilled
professional.
Whether you will revert to prior learning in the form of your early A300,
or the A340 or your later A300 behaviours depends on many things. For one,
it depends on your own level of proactive inhibition - you may have low
levels and so typically experience few problems transitioning; you may
already have unwittingly undergone another kind of behaviour change
methodology - this involves repeatedly doing it the new way while keeping
in mind the old way. This method is much slower than Old Way/New Way in
that it takes many repetitions but eventually it does work; and finally you
may have experienced relatively little "conflict" between the old and new
ways and thus experienced less proactive inhibition and therefore less
interference with your learning of new ways.
The reduced "conflict" may be related to the degree of difference between
the old and the new ways, or it may not. It is sometimes difficult to
predict how much "conflict" a person will experience when trying to change.
It is not just a matter of perceived differences between the two ways,
although this does play an important part. The following example is a case
in point.
The ALCOA factory where we did the Old Way/New Way trial, as described on
the web site, had two large overhead cranes in the casting pit building.
These cranes run on rails that go from one end of this huge bulding to the
other and they carry the crucibles of molten aluminium. The control panels
inside each crane were identical in appearance but not in function. In one
crane the top left button turned the crane to the right; in the other crane
the same button turned that crane to the left. Crane operators, when
transitioning from one crane to the other, would experience interference
from their prior learning (the other crane) and this resulted in several
collisions between cranes. The company was unable to cure the problem with
re-training so they ripped out both control panels, installed panels
identical in appearance AND function and then re-trained all the crane
operators to use this new control panel, all at considerable time and
expense. Old Way/New Way would have fixed this problem by using control
panels that were coloured differently and then re-programming operators
with specific set of control behaviours for each panel/colour, enabling
them to transition readily from one to the other, and back again. The
panel's colour would serve as a cue for the "correct" set of control
responses for that panel.
Perhaps this is what was happening with you in your own aircraft
transitioning. There would have been certain cues to do with appearance of
the plane, its cockpit, controls, etc. that would have ben associated the
appropriate set of responses for each aircraft. It is well known that car
drivers who drive many different kinds of cars for short periods each day
are easily able to produce the correct control sequences for each vehicle.
This may be similar to what's going on with John Bent's example with Cathay
Pacific Airways. Admittedly, as soon as you get inside a car there are many
cues that tell you you are in another, different vehicle and then it is
simply a matter of bringing up the right set of control responses for that
vehicle. And if you only drive it briefly around the car yard or into the
parking bay underneath the hotel, for instance, you never have it long
enough to get a chance to enter the "automatic, unthinking" mode of
response, anyway - everything you do is in the brightly conscious and alert
mode and interference from prior learning never gets a chance to rear its
ugly head. In contrast, Doug Harrington's example is different again
because his use of the rental car is much longer - a week or more - so he
has had time to adjust to that vehicle and learn a new set of control
responses so that when he returns to his own car these responses have been
well practices and learned and become habitual and now they actually
interfere with his re-learning of his own car's controls. Old Way/New Way
can accelerate that process of re-learning, as illustrated in this example.
When I was working in Rockhampton in Central Queensland years ago a
visiting academic came to me with a special request. Being American, he
would look to the left when about to cross the road and then when he saw
the road was clear he would immediately (and automatically, unthinkingly)
step off the sidewalk onto the road surface (as we all do), only to find an
approaching vehicle bearing down upon him from the *right* hand side. In
the interests of longevity he asked if I could assist him with this
habitual problem - he knew he had to look to the right, not the left, when
about to cross the road but found this new behaviour difficult to learn
quickly, despite numerous reminders to himself. As he saw it, it would only
be matter of time before disaster would strike - how many errors like that
are you allowed to make before some car finally mows you down? So I taught
him how to re-program himself to look to the right before crossing and he
was very happy with the result, as was his young wife. A few weeks later he
came back to me with a troubled look on his face. "I know I'm OK, now", he
said, "but what happens when I go back to the States at the end of this
year?" I reassured him that just before his departure we would repeat the
exercise but this time in reverse, so that when he got back home he would
be correctly programmed for traffic coming from the other side. In any
case, I would teach him the method so he could use it to change other
things, as well. Interestingly, one of the benefits of Old Way/New Way is
that you can easily do this - change to one way and then change back again,
and repeat this as many times as you want.
Crossing the road is just another example of the many things we do each day
that are largely under automatic control because they are behaviours that
are practiced and thus learned to habit strength. Most of the time these
habitual responses serve us well because they are appropriate for the
context, which is usually stable, predictable and unchanging.
Focusing, paying attention, being consciously aware and exerting a
deliberate conscious effort are key factors in producing and maintaining
the correct behaviour during transitioning or change. Doug's point that
pilots "pay closer attention to what [they] are doing as [they] shift back
and forth between aircraft" is, I believe, quite correct. The whole process
of flying is designed to stimulate conscious awareness of actions and
procedures - this is built into the process through thorough training and
testing and check lists and cross checking, and so on. Since pilots
typically function more often in a state of conscious awareness, (as
opposed to automatic, not concentrating, habitual mode) there are fewer
opportunities for prior learning to interfere and cause problems. That is
probably a major reason why so few pilot errors actually translate into
incidents or accidents, unlike motor vehicle driving where there is much
less in-built checking and monitoring going on (to say nothing of the much
lower levels of training and skill involved in car driving).
However, when pilots do enter automatic decision making mode, which they do
from time to time and especially when under high workload, fatigue or
stress, prior experience *will* interfere and may cause problems. We're
simply talking percentages, here - higher percentage of "automaticity" with
car drivers, lower with pilots. Yet, when prior learning interferes with
flying the plane safely, the consequences are usually also much more severe
than on the highway, so the aviation industry still has to, (1) be aware of
the problem and (2) adopt the kind of training approach that will minimise
these interference effects.
Paul
-- Paul Baxter Ph.D. M.A. Dip.T. MAPS The Habit Shop: A performance enhancement consultancy 25 Coolaroo Crescent Jindalee Australia 4074 Ph. +61-(0)500-579-257. Fax +61-(0)7-3376-1576. Mobile +61-(0)418-784-951 E-mail: pbaxter_at_personalbest.com.au http://www.personalbest.com.au/~pbaxter/training.htm