Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Communication of professional air transport crews (2- and 3-member crews) in simulated inflight emergencies was analyzed in order to determine (1) whether certain communication features distinguish high-performing from low-performing crews, and (2) whether crew size affects communication used for problem solving. Analyses focused on metacognitively explicit talk; i.e., language used to build a shared understanding of the problem, goals, plans and solution strategies. Normalized frequencies of utterances were compared during normal (low workload) and abnormal (high workload) phases of flight. Highperforming captains, regardless of crew size, were found to be more metacognitively explicit than low-performing captains, and effective captains in 3-member crews were found to be most explicit. First officers' talk complemented their captains' talk: First officers in lowperforming crews tended to be more explicit than first officers in high-performing crews.