A Preliminary Exploration of Stroop Task’s Role in Fatigue Measurement for Air Traffic Controllers

Mental fatigue is a large threat for aviation safety thus a sensitive fatigue index is quite important which is object of current study. One typical stroop task was used to test whether it can be a good mental fatigue measurement. Participants are 116 proficient ATCs from tower, terminal and regional control areas and test was accomplished in their workplace before and after day or night shift thus the results are more available and practical compared to other researches explored in simulated ATC working condition. Yet only practice effect was found when analyzing data of whole participants but no practice effect was demonstrated when only analyzing night shift ATCs’ data from tower and terminal. In sum, current study demonstrated that stroop task was not quite sensitive to fatigue of ATC, thus it will help other researchers to convert to other efficient and sensitive fatigue indexes and tools.