HUMAN FACTORS, 1984,26(5),499-508

A Brief History of Aviation Psychology

JEFFERSON M. KOONCE,l University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts

This paper presents an overview of the field of aviation psychology from its pre- World War I
beginnings to current problems and opportunities for today's aviation psychologists. This
brief survey covers some of the more significant early activities of aviation psychologists in
the United States and Europe.

... aviation psychology encompasses research on
the design of aircraft, particularly cockpit displays
and controls, the study of the perceptual and cog-
nitive processes associated with flying, work on the
selection and training of pilots and ground per-
sonnel, and the development and testing of proce-
dures for operating, maintaining and tracking air-
craft (Kearsley, 1981, p. 10).
A broader view of aviation psychology is
that it is the application of the body of knowl-
edge concerning humans' behavioral capa-
bilities and limitations to the general field of
aviation, including the performance of flight
crew members, support crews, passengers,
managers and controllers in the air traffic
control system, airport personnel, and those
persons involved with the design, sale, and
maintenance of aircraft. The following ac-
count draws on a report by North and Griffin
(1977) and an earlier paper of mine (Koonce,
1979), as well as on numerous personal com-
munica tions.
HOW IT STARTED
With the beginnings of aviation early in
this century, the capabilities of human op-
erators and the effects of the new environ-
ment on the operators became a concern of
the early aviation psychologists. Actually,
1 Requests for reprints should be sent to Jefferson M.
Koonce, Department of IEOR, U. of Massachusetts, Am-
herst, MA 01003.
they were not called aviation psychologists,
but were learned persons, often trained in the
fields of medicine, psychology, and/or physi-
ology, who had an interest in getting the right
persons for the tasks and who were concerned
about the effects of the tasks on the persons.
The demands of early aviation were largely
psychophysiological, involving the acquisi-
tion of the skills of flying, the unique percep-
tual requirements, and the physical stresses
placed on the body.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
During the First World War aviation was
used as an active part of the conflict, and
great emphasis was put on improving the ca-
pabilities of the early air machines and on
selecting and training persons to operate
them. With this, aviation psychology as we
know it today got its true start. According to
Paul M. Fitts (1947a; sixth president of the
Human Factors Society), the first psycholog-
ical testing center for the armed forces was
established in Germany in 1915 for the selec-
tion of motor transport drivers. Tests con-
tinued to be used in Germany during the First
World War, particularly for the selection of
pilots, sound detector operators, and antiair-
craft gunners.

© 1984, The Human Factors Society, Inc. All rights reserved.

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SOO-October, 1984
Aviator Selection and Training
The focus of aviation psychology in the
early days was on the selection and training
of the operators to perform the daring task of
aviating. Later the focus of aviation psy-
chology seemed to shift to the aircraft itself,
with particular emphasis on the controls and
displays and the effects of altitude, G-forces,
noise, temperature, and other environmental
stressors on the operator.
In April, 1917, the Aviation Section of the
Signal Corps had only 52 trained pilots. At
the time of the armistice the Americans'
front-line strength was 740 combat aircraft
and almost 1400 pilots and observers (J 0-
sephy, 1962). As Henmon (1919, p. 103)
pointed out, in the beginning the examiners
were to "select men of good education and
high character, men who were in every way
qualified and fitted to be officers of the U.S.
Army .... " The aviator was not to be an "ae-
rial chauffeur" but a "twentieth century cav-
alry officer mounted on Pegasus."
Enter the Psychologists
The need to expand the number of aviators
rapidly was foreseen, and during the early
stages of the war the Council of the American
Psychological Association established a Com-
mittee on Psychological Problems of Avia-
tion. In November, 1918, that committee be-
came a subcommittee of the National Re-
search Council. Two early members, W. R.
Miles (40th president of the American Psy-
chological Association; the reader may be
surprised at how many APApresidents have
been concerned with aviation psychology)
and 1. T. Troland, worked on the develop-
ment of mental and physiological tests to de-
termine aptitude for flying. The evaluation of
the tests, 23 in all, was begun in June, 1917,
by giving them to Army Aviation Cadets at-
tending the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology ground school.
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HUMAN FACTORS
Later in the summer of 1917 the committee
was expanded to include Edward 1. Thorn-
dike (21st president of APA)as executive sec-
retary, Major John B. Watson (25th president
of APA), Warner Brown, Francis Maxfield,
and H. C. McComas. The chair of the com-
mittee was George M. Stratton (17th presi-
dent of APA),who had been working on tests
for aviators at Rockwell Field in San Diego
before joining the committee. Thorndike di-
rected a comparative analysis of the tests in
the battery with those persons who were and
were not successful in learning to fly. A
number of tests were selected as promising,
and Captains Stratton and V. A. C. Henmon
tried them out at Rockwell Field and Kelly
Field (Henmon, 1919).
Out of a battery of 10 tests, those showing
the greatest relationship to flight-training
performance were emotional stability, per-
ception of tilt, and mental alertness. The term
emotional stability did not have the meaning
it has today. Tests of emotional stability both
in the United States and abroad were tests to
measure an individual's responses to sudden
excitation, typically from a loud noise such
as a pistol shot. In terms of attrition, approx-
imately 50% to 60% of the applicants were
eliminated by the examiners, another 15%
"washed out" of the ground school, and still
there were at least 6% who were eliminated
during flying training for inaptitude.
The War Department authorized the Med·
ical Research Board in October, 1917, to in-
vestigate the phases of fljght bearing on the
medical and physical aspects of the aviators.
Research by Major Knight Dunlap (1919; 31st
president of APA) at the psychology section
of the Medical Research Laboratory at Ha-
zelhurst Field, Long Island, led to the devel-
opment of a series of psychological tests to
predict an aviation candidate's ability to
cope with high-altitude flight. Bagby (1921)
reported that they used the Henderson
Breathing Apparatus to simulate the effects
HISTORY OF AVIATION PSYCHOLOGY
of altitude and administered a battery of sen-
sory, motor performance, memory, and at-
tention tests. The result was a standardized
test sent out to field units for administration
to Aviation Cadets.
Many other research projects dealing with
the selection of candidates for pilot training
and the effects of stressors on the aviators
were conducted in the United States during
the First World War. In the summer of 1917
Major John B. Watson was assigned to orga-
nize methods for the selection of personnel.
He also assembled a group of psychologists
who worked with medical officers and phys-
iologists in studying aviation problems at the
Bureau of Mines in Washington (Kellogg,
1921). Another psychologist, Robert Yerkes
(1919), who later gained fame researching
primate intelligence (and as 26th president of
APA), was also involved in the development
of tests for the selection of aviation candi-
dates.
Similarities and Differences
Dockeray and Isaacs (1921) reviewed the ef-
forts in aviation psychology research
France, England, and the United States
during the war years.
Italy. The Italians developed a fairly exten-
sive research program in selecting persons for
flight training. A major effort was performed
in laboratories at Turin, Naples, and Rome,
under the direction of Gieuseppe Gradenigo.
The initial work compared the performances
of successful, mediocre, and unsuccessful
aviators and concluded that the good air-
plane pilot was one "who to a notable degree
of extension and distribution of attention,
adds constancy, precision, coordinating
ability of the psycho-motor activity, and who
possesses a sufficient inhibitory power of
emotive reactions not to be disturbed in the
above functions on account of emotional
stimulus" (Dockeray and Isaacs, 1921, p.
116).
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October, 1984-501
So, in addition to the tests of physiological
and medical functioning, studies were con-
ducted on reaction time, attention, emotional
stability, muscular sensation, perception of
muscular effort, and equilibrium. An inter-
esting finding by Saffiotti, studying aviators
suffering nervous exhaustion from duty at the
front, was that their visual reaction times
were longer than others, but their aural reac-
tion times were faster and showed greater
variability than those of other aviators.
In their studies of emotional reactions they
used a pistol shot, an automobile claxon, or
the explosion of a firecracker to serve as an
emotive stimulus. The responses observed
were changes in circulation, breathing rate,
and tremor of the hand. They noted that there
were increases in reaction times from expo-
sure to the emotive stimuli, and that in-
creases of only 10% or less were considered
"good," whereas increases greater than 25%
were considered poor and disqualifying.
The Italians placed a good bit of emphasis
on the candidate's performance on tests of
equilibrium. The most favored was the
in Italy, Barany rotating-chair test, also liked by
American researchers including Herbert
Woodrow, later head of the psychology de-
partment of the University of Illinois (and
49th president of APA). Other tests of equilib-
rium were the rotary vertigo test and the tilt
test, in which one would have to right oneself,
and which suffered from the confounding ef-
fects of the induced vertigo.
In general, the Italians did not disqualify a
person on the basis of one test but tended to
develop an overall profile of the applicant.
They felt that the pursuit pilots had a better
ability to perceive their body position; lower
visual, aural, and choice reaction times; and
lower average deviations in reaction times.
The pursuit pilots' resistance to the emotive
stimuli was not necessarily greater than that
of others. But the pilots of the "slow ma-
chines," presumably transport and bomber
S02-0ctober, 1984
aircraft, were thought to be of the muscular
type in reaction time.
France. The French tended to emphasize
reaction time and studies of emotional sta-
bility. Their use of emotional stability was
based on a test quite similar to that already
described for the Italians; however, they used
the results of the reaction-time tests and the
emotional stability tests together to develop
five classes of candidates. The two classes
that were not acceptable for flight training
were those who had reaction times with large
deviations and greatly exaggerated emo-
tional responses, and those who had very ir-
regular reaction times but did not show ex-
cessive emotional responses.
England. The researchers in Great Britain
paid little attention to reaction time and re-
sponses to emotional stimuli; instead, they
attended to the effects of altitude flying and
simple motor coordination tests. Most of
their experiments were designed to collect
physiological data such as pulse rate, blood
pressure, and expiration force and time,
using a manometer designed for this purpose.
The coordination tests consisted of such
things as walking a line heel-to-toe fashion
and turning on one foot, standing on one foot
for 15 seconds with the eyes open or closed,
and a test for tremor of the hands and the
tongue. The presence of tremor was found to
be highly correlated with poor aptitude to fly.
DURING THE PEACE
Toward the end of the war and after the
armistice, officers of the Medical Research
Laboratory attached to the American Expe-
ditionary Forces in Europe administered
many tests to aviators to identify the char-
acteristics of those who were successful.
Many of these efforts were to validate tests
that had been developed in the States on pilot
trainees and to see how some of the tests de-
veloped by U.S. allies would compare with
those originating in the United States.
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HUMAN FACTORS
Captain Dockeray sought to get an insight
into the personality of the aviators by taking
the training and being assigned to flight duty.
About the personality of the aviators, he ob-
served that no general law could be stated,
but he ventured the conclusion that "What
seems most needed by the aviator is intelli-
gence, that is, the power of quick adjustment
to a new situation and good judgment"
(Dockeray and Isaacs, 1921, p. 147).
Germany. Soon after the First World War,
Germany began to rebuild its military forces,
and in 1920 the War Ministry issued an order
to develop psychology in the Army. By the
late 1920s, psychological testing and selec-
tion procedures were well established. In
fact, by 1927 all officer training candidates
were given a psychological examination. Paul
Metz was the director of a staff of psycholo-
gists who developed a testing program for the
new Luftwaffe in 1939, and it continued to be
used through 1942. The program was based
on that already in use by the Army. Ans-
bacher (1941) provides a review of the
German military psychology program from
1926 through 1940, and Fitts (l947a) provides
an account of the development and applica-
tion of psychology in Germany during this
period and on into the Second World War.
According to Fitts (1947a, p. 156), "As late
as 1942 the program for selecting German Air
Force officers was essentially that established
for ground officers in 1927." There were a few
specialized tests for the aircrew members be-
yond those used for the ground officers. After
the program was discontinued, the selection
of pilots was conducted at the local recrui ting
stations by the recruiting officers and the
medical examiners. They used some paper-
and-pencil tests along with sports tests, but
it seems that the major emphasis was placed
on interviews and personal materials brought
by the applicants to attest to their skills, per-
sonality, intellect, and general character.
United States. In the U.S., aviation was fea-
HISTORY OF AVIATION PSYCHOLOGY
tured as barnstorming after the war. But that
was not all of aviation. In the ensuing years,
speed and altitude records fell one after the
other. In the 1937 volume of the Journal of
Comparative Psychology, Ross McFarland
(14th president of The Human Factors So-
ciety) had published several articles on the
effects of altitude on people. The aircraft also
became important for the more useful tasks
of mail delivery and commercial air travel.
WORLD WAR II
In 1939 the National Research Council
Committee on Aviation Psychology was es-
tablished. This group, first chaired by Jack
Jenkins of the University of Maryland and
later by Morris Viteles of the University of
Pennsylvania, supported and stimulated a
wide range of research in aviation psy-
chology. Alexander C. Williams, Jr., began
flight research at the University of Maryland
in 1939 (and on December 8, 1941. he vol-
unteered as a Naval Aviator). In 1940, John
Flanagan was recruited to set up the Army's
aviation psychology program, which started
the following year with Arthur Melton, Frank
Geldard, and Paul Horst as the nucleus of the
research group. Two comprehensive articles
reviewing the role of aviation psychology be-
fore World War II were by Pratt (1941) and
the Committee on Selection and Training of
Pilots (1942).
The Blue Books
The efforts during the war years in the U.S.
Army Air Forces Aviation Psychology Pro-
gram (1947) were thoroughly documented in
a series of 19 books, later to be known as the
"blue books." A few of the psychologists as-
sociated with this program continued in the
field of aviation psychology, whereas many
entered academia and gained fame in other
areas. Volume 1, authored by John Flanagan
(1947), gave an overview of the entire avia-
tion psychology program. Others were edited
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October, 1984-503
by such notables such as Sidney Bijou, Philip
DuBois, Paul Fitts, Robert Gagne, Frank Gel-
dard, J. P. Guilford (58th president of APA),
Arthur Melton, Neal Miller (69th president of
APA), and R. L. Thorndike.
Of particular interest were Volume 4, Ap-
paratus Tests, edited by Arthur Melton (1947);
Volume 8, Psychological Research on Pilot
Training, edited by Neal Miller (1947); and
Volume 19, Psychological Research on Equip-
ment Design, edited by Paul Fitts (1947b). The
Fitts report seems to have been the first
major publication on human factors engi-
neering. Two years later, Donald B. Lindsley
(1949) edited another, titled Human Factors
in Undersea Warfare, with a much-quoted
foreword by Walter S. Hunter (39th president
of APA).
Tests, Tests, Tests
As one might suspect, the efforts of aviation
psychologists during World War II strongly
emphasized the selection and training of
aviators, including pilots, navigators, and
bombardiers, and the effects of interfacing
these persons with the new equipment being
developed. To a lesser extent, research was
conducted on fatigue, vigilance, target detec-
tion, high G-forces, protective clothing, spe-
cial equipment for extremes of altitude and
temperature, and perhaps most notable,
speech intelligibility at high altitudes, by
J. C. R. Licklider (the inventor of peak clip-
ping), Karl D. Kryter, and George A. Miller
(77th president of APA)at Harvard University
(Licklider and Miller, 1951). It should be
noted that the research in aviation psy-
chology was not restricted to the Army Air
Corps. The Navy had many of the same re-
search concerns.
Other reviews of the research that had
taken place during this era were published in
psychological journals. The members of the
research section of the Department of Psy-
chology of the School of Aviation Medicine
S04-0ctober, 1984
(1944) published the results of their research
program on psychomotor tests. Morris Vi-
teles (1945a, 1945b) reviewed five years of re-
search on the aircraft pilot, giving details of
the Army Alpha test and the psychomotor
testing that had been performed during that
time. Another review of the work in aviation
psychology during World War II was pre-
sented by Viteles in Boring and Lindzey's
(1967) A History of Psychology in Autobiog-
raphy, Volume 5. (Edwin G. Boring and
Gardner Lindzey were the 37th and 75th
presidents of APA,respectively.)
COMING OF AGE
After the Second World War, aviation psy-
chology was here to stay, as evidenced by a
proliferation of books and articles on the sub-
ject (Varney, 1950). Colonel Paul Fitts re-
mained as chief of the Psychology Branch of
the Aero Medical Laboratory until 1949. Ar-
thur W. Melton and Charles W. Bray built the
Air Force Personnel and Training Research
Center (commonly referred to as "Afpatrick")
into the largest military psychological re-
search organization until then (and possibly
until now). Human engineering research and
application in the Navy was centered at the
Naval Electronics Laboratory at Bolling
Field near Washington, D.C., under the lead-
ership of Franklin V. Taylor and the genius
of Henry P. Birmingham (Birmingham and
Taylor, 1954).
Similar to the pattern after the First World
War, some of the professionals working with
the armed forces remained in uniform or in
civil service after the war, whereas many
others got out and went to school on the GI
Bill. Some, who had completed their educa-
tion before the war,left to apply their knowl-
edge as university faculty members. Thus, the
military experiences of aviation were brought
to the campuses of universities and soon
thereafter to industry.
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HUMAN FACTORS
Enter the Universities
Several university research laboratories
were developed, often under contract to the
U.S. government, to look at aviation-related
problems. Stanley N. Roscoe (1980; fourth
president of the Human Factors Society), who
had served as an Army Air Corps pilot, tells
about the founding of the Aviation Psy-
chology Laboratory at the University of Illi-
nois in January, 1946, by Alexander C. Wil-
liams, Jr., who had served as a Naval Aviator.
The research was focused on the transfer of
pilot training from simulators to airplanes
(Williams and Ralph E. Flexman reported the
first such experiment anywhere in 1949) and
on the conceptual foundations for mission
analysis and flight display and control design
(Williams, 1947, 1971, 1980).Williams stayed
with the university until 1955, when he re-
joined Roscoe, then at Hughes Aircraft Com-
pany. He was succeeded at Illinois by Robert
C. Houston for two years and then by Jack A.
Adams until 1965, when the laboratory was
temporarily closed.
Aviation psychology at the Ohio State Uni-
versity began in January, 1945, with the es-
tablishment of the Midwest Institute of Avia-
tion Psychology under the School of Aviation
by a grant from the National Research Coun-
cil's Committee on Selection and Training of
Aircraft Pilots, chaired by Morris S. Viteles.
It was to be an interdisciplinary program for
the conduct of research" in a number of areas
including psychology, physiology, physics
and applied optics, medicine, engineering,
meteorology and agriculture" (Bevis, 1945).
Ohio State's Aviation Psychology Labora-
tory was opened in 1949 under the direction
of Paul Fitts. Fitts left the Air Force's engi-
neering psychology program in the capable
hands of WaIter F. Grether. Aviation psy-
chology research was also conducted at the
University of Pennsylvania and at Purdue
Universi ty. The enthusiasm of the researchers
HISTORY OF AVIATION PSYCHOLOGY
at these laboratories, the glamour of flight,
the support of research contracts, and the
new know ledge gai ned from their efforts
fanned the fires to keep them going. The re-
search laboratories at Illinois and Ohio State
have had their ups and downs, but they are
still both very active at this time.
Another academic program in aviation psy-
chology worth special note is the one at Hei-
delberg College in Tiffin, Ohio (Wise, 1979).
It is not as old as the others mentioned,
having been started in the late 1960s, but it
is believed to be the only undergraduate pro-
gram in aviation psychology in the United
States. The program was developed and is
still directed by Leon Wise. It offers under-
graduates the unique experience of exam-
ining the field before "it becomes a career
commitment" (p. 2).
Enter the Airlines
Thomas Gordon (1949) reported a study of
the methods used by airlines in the selection
and evaluation of pilots and of efforts to de-
termine the critical requirements of the air-
line pilot's job. Gordon compared the selec-
tion test scores of pilots released for lack of
flying proficiency wi th the scores of those
who were successful (currently employed)
and showed that the seven selection variables
failed to discriminate between the successful
and unsuccessful pilots. He recommended
that new selection procedures be imple-
mented and that more objective means of as-
sessing pilot proficiency be developed.
The airline pilot, and most of the support
systems, were of major concern in Mc-
Farland's revised text, Human Factors in Air
Transportation (1953). That text was a sum-
mary of the then-current knowledge in the
broad areas of avia tion psychology and
human factors in air transportation. The text
also included material on medicine, physi-
ology, and engineering design.
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October, 1984-505
Enter the eM
During the 1940s and into the 1950s, the
Civil Aeronautics Administration sponsored
research on human factors in aviation,
mainly through the auspices of Morris Vi-
teles's aforementioned National Research
Council Committee on Aviation Psychology.
The principal product of the contract re-
search, performed mostly by universities,
was another outstanding series of studies
documented in the "gray cover reports."
Number 92, written in 1950 by S. N. Roscoe,
J. F. Smith, B. E. Johnson (now Beatrice
Johnson Matheny), P. E. Dittman, and A. C.
Williams, Jr., reported the first comparative
experimental simulator evaluation of a map-
type VOR/DME navigation display em-
ploying a CRT in the cockpit. (Yes, Boeing,
that was in 1950.)
Under another part of this program at the
University of Illinois, Beatrice Johnson
Matheny developed the first air traffic control
simulator. The tracks of 16 Link trainer
"crabs," traveling over maps on tables in one
large room, were telemetered to CRT displays
in the "control tower" next door (Johnson,
Williams, and Roscoe, 1951). This entire fa-
cility was moved to the CAA's Technical De-
velopment and Evaluation Center in India-
napolis, where William E. Jackson fed the
"crab tracks" to the actual CRTs in the In-
dianapolis tower, and the crab "pilots" were
"controlled" along with the pilots of the real
airplanes flying in the area. That was the
start of the giant computerized ATC simula-
tion facility now at the FAA's Technical
Center in Atlantic City.
It was during the same period that Paul
Fitts, and later George E. Briggs, also began
studying air traffic control at Ohio State, and
Conrad 1. Kraft did his studies on "broad-
band blue" control-room lighting. In 1951,
Fitts chaired a blue-ribbon committee com-
posed of A. Chapanis, F. C. Frick, W. R. Garner,
S06-0ctober, 1984
J. W. Gebhard, W. F. Grether, R. H. Hen-
neman, W. E. Kappauf, E. B. Newman, and
A. C. Williams, Jr. (Fitts, 1951). Their product
was the now-classic report, Human Engi-
neering for an Effective Air-Navigation and
Traffic-Control System, published by the NRC
Committee on Aviation Psychology. Soon
thereafter, George Miller (1956) made an-
other of his many contributions to aviation
psychology (and to psychology in general)
with the publication of "The Magical
Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some
Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Infor-
mation."
Reenter the Europeans
In 1956, a group of nine aviation psychol-
ogists in Europe started wha t is now the
Western European Association for Aviation
Psychologists (WEAAP). That organization
holds conferences once every two years and
presently has more than 100 members. The
aviation psychologists of the WEAAP pay
more attention to clinical factors in the se-
lection of flight-training candidates and in pi-
lots' general behavior than do those in the
United States.
Meanwhile, Out West
In the United States, a group of psycholo-
gists would gather at the annual meeting of
the American Psychological Association and
do some social "hanger flying." In 1964, a
group of these psychologists, who wanted to
use those annual gatherings to conduct a
more formal exchange of information about
their professional interests in aviation,
formed the Association of Aviation Psychol-
ogists. Their meetings are now held in con-
junction with the annual meeting of the
Human Factors Society each October.
The purpose of the association is to pro-
mote aviation psychology and related aero-
space and environmental disciplines (1) by
stimulating the dissemination of knowledge,
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HUMAN FACTORS
(2) by meetings, professional contacts, dis-
cussions, and publications, (3) by the im-
provement of the education and research in-
terests of psychologists with respect to avia-
tion needs and problems, and (4) by
advancing the application of psychological
principles and research to the promotion of
aviation safety and welfare.
Articles dealing with aviation psychology
have generally been published in such jour-
nals as Human Factors; Aviation, Space, and
Environmental Medicille; Ergonomics; Applied
Ergonomics; Systems, Man, and Cybernetics;
and several of the journals of the American
Psychological Association. In 1971, Stan
Roscoe, who had returned to the University
of Illinois in 1969 to found the new Aviation
Research Laboratory, began publication of
Aviatiol1 Research MOllographs. This series
was discontinued a year later, but Roscoe's
(1980) book, Aviation Psychology, summarizes
the contents of the monographs as well as
other research conducted at the University of
Illinois Airport and at Hughes Aircraft Com-
pany between 1946 and 1977.
PROSPECTUS
Most of the research in aviation psychology
has been focused on the controls and displays
in the cockpit and the selection and training
of flight crew members. But recent changes
in social behavior and the international po-
litical climate have caused a broadening of
the scope of some aviation psychologists. For
example, aviation psychologists have become
engaged with the study and identification of
persons involved in terrorist activities, and
more and more they are serving as expert
witnesses in aircraft accident litigation.
A problem that has emerged as potentially
greater than the "knobs and dials" of the
cockpit is communications, or lack thereof, in
the aviation environment. In a selection of
papers edited by Billings and Cheaney (1981),
several problems in the transfer of informa-
HISTORY OF AVIATION PSYCHOLOGY
tion are discussed: briefing of relief control-
lers on the ground, communications between
the controllers and the aircraft they are con-
trolling and among flight crew members
themsel ves, and emergency air- to-ground
communications. As innocuous as these areas
may seem, a brief review of aviation mishaps
(Jackson, 1983) indicates that such areas are
critical to the safe operation of the aviation
system and are in great need of further study.
Even further from the cockpit than these
areas is one that has had little systematic at-
tention in recent years, although the problem
grows greater daily. That area is the entire
airport terminal: from passenger, baggage,
and cargo processing to aircraft mainte-
nance, fuel handling, and systems support.
Despite the multitude of problems in these
areas, the field of aviation psychology seems
to respond as if these problems are too far
from the cockpit or the control tower to war-
rant attention.
The air route traffic controllers have re-
ceived the attention of aviation psychologists
in the area of workload stressors and their
impact on efficient and safe management of
the flight environment (Fisher, 1984). Not
only are the controllers themselves of in-
terest, but the advances technology has given
to us have impacted the controllers' environ-
ment with a host of new types of displays and
the use of computers to aid in the sharing of
the workload.
The problems of selection and training of
aviation personnel continue to be with us. Al-
though one may wonder why, 40 years fol-
lowing the establishment of the Army's avia-
tion psychology program, we still need to
perform research on the selection and
training of pilots. However, considering the
dramatic changes that have taken place in
the aircraft industry and the air forces and
airlines of the world, not to mention a robust
space program, one can see the challenges in
personnel selection, as well as training, that
are faced by aviation psychologists today.
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October, 1984-507
The rapid advances of technology have im-
pacted the cockpit environment with displays
projected on the windscreen or the operator's
helmet visor, "glass" instrument panels with
multifunction electronic displays, keyboards
by which the pilots enter data into their on-
board computers, voice interactive systems
that will permit pilots to listen and talk to
their computers, fly-by-wire control systems,
and the ability of computers to share the op-
erator's workload. It seems that the future
promises limitless opportunities for aviation
psychologists.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to acknowledge Stanley N. Roscoe
for his many valuable comments regarding editorial style
and for the addi tional information he contributed to this
article on the history of aviation psychology.
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