EEG-Engagement Index and Auditory Alarm Misperception: An Inattentional Deafness Study in Actual Flight Condition

The inability to detect auditory alarms is a critical issue in many domains such as aviation. An interesting prospect for flight safety is to understand the neural mechanisms underpinning auditory alarm misperception under actual flight condition. We conducted an experiment in which four pilots were to respond by button press when they heard an auditory alarm. The 64 channel Cognionics dry-wireless EEG system was used to measure brain activity in a 4 seat light aircraft. An instructor was present on all flights and in charge of initiating the various scenarios to induce two levels of task engagement (simple navigation task vs. complex maneuvering task). Our experiment revealed that inattentional deafness to single auditory alarms could take place as the pilots missed a mean number of 12.5 alarms occurring mostly during the complex maneuvering condition, when the EEG engagement index was high.