Video games often try to be “realistic” by getting the details right in how everything looks and sounds, but this physical fidelity isn’t as important in a training simulation as cognitive fidelity, Daniel Gopher explains:
My main interest has been how to expand the limits of human attention, information processing and response capabilities which are critical in complex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as flying a military jet or playing professional basketball. Using a tennis analogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon”-like champions. Each with their own styles, but performing to their maximum capacity to succeed in their environments.
What research over the last 15–20 years has shown is that cognition, or what we call thinking and performance, is really a set of skills that we can train systematically. And that computer-based cognitive trainers or “cognitive simulations” are the most effective and efficient way to do so.
This is an important point, so let me emphasize it. What we have discovered is that a key factor for an effective transfer from training environment to reality is that the training program ensures “Cognitive Fidelity”, this is, it should faithfully represent the mental demands that happen in the real world. Traditional approaches focus instead on physical fidelity, which may seem more intuitive, but less effective and harder to achieve. They are also less efficient, given costs involved in creating expensive physical simulators that faithfully replicate, let’s say, a whole military helicopter or just a significant part of it.
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The need for physical fidelity is not based on research, at least for the type of high-performance training we are talking about. In fact, a simple environment may be better in that it does not create the illusion of reality. Simulations can be very expensive and complex, sometimes even costing as much as the real thing, which limits the access to training. Not only that, but the whole effort may be futile, given that some important features can not be replicated (such as gravitation free tilted or inverted flight), and even result in negative transfer, because learners pick up on specific training features or sensations that do not exist in the real situation.
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In one [study], which constituted the basis for the 1994 paper, we showed that 10 hours of training for flight cadets, in an attention trainer instantiated as a computer game — Space Fortress — resulted in 30% improvement in their flight performance. The results led the trainer to be integrated into the regular training program of the flight school. It was used in the training of hundreds of flight cadets for several years. In the other one, sponsored by NASA, we compared the results of the cognitive trainer vs. a sophisticated, pictorial and high-level-graphic and physical-fidelity-based computer simulation of a Blackhawk helicopter. The result: the Space Fortress cognitive trainer was very successful in improving performance, while the alternative was not. The study was published in the proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society: Hart S. G and Battiste V. (1992), Flight test of a video game trainer. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 26th Meeting (pp. 1291–1295).
This led to IntelliGym‘s basketball training software:
In order to develop a basketball cognitive training tool, our researchers mapped the brain skills that are required for top performance in the game of basketball. These include (among others) reading plays, positioning, decision making, team work, and execution under pressure. Together, they constitute what is usually referred to as game intelligence. With this map in hand, the researchers designed a system that simulates the exact same skill set.
Airline flight training on high-end simulators apparently does not currently include recovery from full aerodynamic stall. Two main reasons for this: (a) difficulty in real-time modeling of the turbulent flows that exist over wings and control surfaces, and (b) the assumption that the goal should be to *prevent* stalls — recovery will lose altitude, and this can be dangerous if there is other traffic below you — and that with proper attention to avoidance, recovery will not be necessary. These assumptions, though, are receiving scrutiny, especially in the wake of the Airbus/Air France crash.
Perhaps a cognitive-training approach could be useful here: even if you’re not modeling the stalled behavior of the airplane correctly, the recognition of a stall and the primary necessary recovery action — yoke or stick forward, nose down — could be reinforced.
On the other hand, the multiplicity of control modes on the Airbus may mean that the trainer would have to incorporate considerable detail as to the aircraft systems.
Here’s a case in which simulator physical fidelity may well have been important: the commuter airliner crash near Buffalo a few years back. When the stick pusher activated, the airplane’s last-ditch defense against a stall, the flight crew reacted incorrectly, pulling back and overpowering the pusher. I believe (but have not researched this carefully) that the simulator which had been used for training did not include a stick-pusher feature, if that is the case, then the pilot & copilot had quite likely never experienced the physical sensations involved.
Also, it’s reported that the crew had seen a video on tailplane icing, a condition under which the nose would tend to drop and the proper recovery action actually would be back yoke. The NTSB apparently did not think this was a likely factor given the very short time interval between the stick-pusher activation and the pilot’s pull on the yoie.