Expertise development for a visual task: Eye movements, verbal reports, and spatial abilities in air traffic control

Errors in Air Traffic Control (ATC) are a risk to human life hence, air traffic controllers have to make fast and correct decisions. These decisions are based on complex visualizations of a surrounding area (figure 1). These visualisations are complex because they involve representations of many moving airplanes including their labels with crucial information (i.e., call sign, speeds, heading, etc.). Despite of increasing air traffic, live of people must not be at risk, so further understanding the causes for successful air traffic controllers as well as understanding the difficulties of less experienced air traffic controllers is crucial. Such findings may inform user interface designers and instructional designers in ATC. Hence, this study examined how experts, intermediates, and novices in ATC perceive and interpret ATC stimuli on a perceptual level (by means of eye-tracking) and on a performance level. Furthermore, the potentially mediating influence of spatial abilities was investigated. ATC decisions and a potential mediating influence of spatial abilities was investigated.