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Autopsy of an airplane crash: a transactional approach to forensic cognitive science

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Abstract

In considerations of cognition in complex, technologically enhanced work environments, the question often concerns the boundaries of the phenomena to be researched. In classical cognitive science, the boundary of cognition is the brain case. More recent approaches, including distributed cognition and joint cognitive systems, draw the boundaries so that human operators and aspects of their environment are included; and the foci of the inquiries are interactions and representations that are passed around between players. This study makes a case for a transactional approach, which acknowledges a unity/identity of agent and environment. To understand the effect of agent characteristics in performance requires knowing the environment characteristics; and to understand the effect of the environment characteristics on performance requires knowing the agent characteristics. The approach is exemplified in the analysis of key instants of the spectacular and widely publicized crash of TransAsia Flight GE235 in which 43 lives were lost. The transactional analysis exhibits the internal cognitive dynamic in the cockpit that actually explains why agents acted as they did (rather than what they did not do because situation awareness lacked). It is better suited as a foundation of forensic cognitive science than the classical view on human error.

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Notes

  1. The tasks in a two-pilot aircraft have one pilot responsible for flying the aircraft (PF), whereas the non-fling pilot (here denoted by PM) must monitor and crosscheck management and operations of the PF.

  2. Philosophers characterize units that have a gap within themselves or being spread over different parts by means of the adjective dehiscent (Waldenfels 2006).

  3. Philosophers characterize temporally dislocated units, which fall apart but remain connected, by means of the adjective diastatic (Waldenfels 2006).

  4. The term “machine player” is used to highlight that some of the events in a joint cognitive system occur in computers and computing systems (Henriqson et al. 2011).

  5. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/2uyy3n/engine_flightdata_readout_for_the_crashed/.

  6. The verb formulate is part of the theoretical discourse in the discipline of conversation analysis to mark when social actors describe what they are doing for the purpose of making this action salient to other actors. In the aviation community, the same is referred to as verbalizing an action.

  7. Feathering refers to the movement of the propeller blades parallel to the flight to reduce their spinning and the friction.

  8. Up trim means that the torque on the engine increases from the 90% it is operating at to 100%, thereby compensating for the lost power of the other engine.

  9. In a stall, there is no longer sufficient lift on the wings to pull the aircraft upward; among others, a stall may occur when the speed of the aircraft is too slow for a given angle of attack.

  10. In addition to GE235, situation awareness is used as explanation for the crashes of a DHC-8 near Palmerston North, New Zealand (June 9, 1995), a Boeing 737 near Dubrovnik, Croatia (April 3, 1996), a Fokker 100 near Heho, Myanmar (December 12, 2012), an ATR-72-600 near Pakse, Laos (October 16, 2013), and an ATR 72-500 near Magon, Taiwan (July 23, 2014).

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  1. Applied Cognitive Science, University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building A567, Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2, Canada

    Wolff-Michael Roth

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Correspondence to Wolff-Michael Roth.

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Roth, WM. Autopsy of an airplane crash: a transactional approach to forensic cognitive science. Cogn Tech Work 20, 267–287 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-018-0465-3

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