Author: Dave English

Meditating military helicopter pilots

By Dave English

A peer-reviewed scientific study published this year shows the positive impact of meditation on personnel in two Norwegian Air Force helicopter squadrons. This was not new-age wishful thinking, or sloppy science self-reporting that some people felt good. No, this was university and Air Force doctors and scientists taking chemical measurements of salivary cortisol, testing performance on computer-based cognitive tasks, and comparing the results to a control group. The subjects were all high-performance airmen during a prolonged period of high-demand work. This is real-world stuff. The results: From a mixed between–within analysis revealed that the [mindfulness training] participants compared to the control group had … Continue reading Meditating military helicopter pilots

Do ‘brain-training’ games make you a better pilot?

By Dave English

The Association for Psychological Science recently published a massive 200-page research report on brain training programs, seeing if fun cognitive tasks or games can enhance performance on other tasks. Peer-reviewed, respected authors, fully-referenced. It covered all the valid studies that have examined this question, a huge research database. And the results? Based on this examination, we find extensive evidence that brain-training interventions improve performance on the trained tasks, less evidence that such interventions improve performance on closely related tasks, and little evidence that training enhances performance on distantly related tasks or that training improves everyday cognitive performance. So no, they don’t! … Continue reading Do ‘brain-training’ games make you a better pilot?

Checklist complete! Or is it?

By Dave English

This airline training slide explains ‘active monitoring’ – visualize, act, compare. You must look for something, not just at something: It’s easy to say we should be mentally flying the aeroplane, but it’s also kind of a cop out. So it’s a nice addition to have some concrete ideas on how to actually do it.

Anne McClain on facing fears

By Dave English

Anne McClain has faced down many fears, and is now going to be rewarded with sights that are literally out of this world. She’s been an Army combat helicopter pilot who deployed to Iraq, an instructor pilot and a test pilot. She is currently a NASA astronaut, in the pipeline to fly to Mars.   Quote is from an interview in Glamour magazine, Jan 2016, talking about walking out on the launchpad to ride a rocket. And the picture is from her super-cool NASA video bio.