Toward the Use of Pupillary Responses for Pilot Selection

For selection practitioners, it seems important to assess the level of mental resources invested in order to perform a demanding task. In this study, we investigated the potential of pupil size measurement to discriminate the most proficient pilot students from the less proficient.

Cognitive workload is known to influence learning outcome. More specifically, cognitive difficulties observed during pilot training are often related to a lack of efficient mental workload management.

Twenty pilot students performed a laboratory multitasking scenario, composed of several stages with increasing workload, while their pupil size was recorded. Two levels of pilot students were compared according to the outcome after 2 years of training: high success and medium success.

Our findings suggested that task-evoked pupil size measurements could be a promising predictor of flight training difficulties during the 2-year training. Indeed, high-level pilot students showed greater pupil size changes from low-load to high-load stages of the multitasking scenario than medium-level pilot students. Moreover, average pupil diameters at the low-load stage were smallest for the high-level pilot students.

Following the neural efficiency hypothesis framework, the most proficient pilot students supposedly used their mental resources more efficiently than the least proficient while performing the multitasking scenario.

These findings might introduce a new way of managing selection processes complemented with ocular measurements. More specifically, pupil size measurement could enable identification of applicants with greater chances of success during pilot training.