Mindfulness Research Paper

Mindfulness - Applications within the Cockpit Environment
March 01, 2012

Abstract

In today’s world with new technology surging every day, high risk organizations need to continuously assess their safety practices. Specifically within the aviation industry, more attention needs to be placed on proper communication strategies within the cockpit environment. Poor communication between crew members has been proven to be a high cause for human error and alternative communicative methods such as “mindfulness” will be examined. The concept of mindfulness will be discussed as an application for both interpersonal and intrapersonal levels of communication within the cockpit environment. It’s implications and effectiveness
This study was conducted for the exploration of the concept of shared mindfulness using simulated scenarios of the interaction of captain and first officer during crisis situations. Participants were senior year aviation students in the Aviation Flight Science program Line Oriented Flight Training (LOFT) classes. The study proposed to observe the communicative behaviors during a crisis situation between crew members to determine if these behaviors affect the outcome based on decision-making strategies (Krieger, 2005). The participants were presented with various crisis scenarios that simulated the physiological and psychological aspects of a crisis environment (Krieger, 2005). Twenty aviation dyadic interactions were recorded using the various scenarios. Several communication qualities were extracted from this study, which conceptualize the construct of shared mindfulness. These categories described by Krieger (2005) in her exploratory article are: reasoning from a positive perspective, perception of multiple perspectives, verbal projection of thoughts and feelings, mindful acknowledgment of partner communication, and demonstrated fluid turn taking. Participants that showed higher levels of mindfulness tended to exhibit these qualities and in
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