The subject of how much good simulators do for a pilot learning pilot-related things is as old as simulator technology, which is to say, almost as old as aviation itself. And when the subject arises, the issue of negative transference is usually close behind.
As most of you probably know, negative transference is what happens when a person takes one skill from a particular skill set — let’s say being shrewdly analytical while speaking with colleagues about a project — and uses that skill while doing something similar — like listening to your spouse vent about a particularly rough day and reflexively applying that same kind of incisive analysis to that situation. If you can be taught at all, experience will soon teach you that incisive analysis is the last thing your significant other wants or needs at that point in time. This is an example of a skill that works well in one situation but that gives exceedingly bad results in a similar situation. Negative transference.
There are myriad examples of this phenomeon. Since I’m a boy let me talk about sports: racquetball and tennis in this case. While these two sports are extremely similar in many regards, the way you stroke the ball correctly in these court sports is very different. Conseqeuntly, racquetball players have a heck of a time learning how to hit a tennis ball properly, and vice versa, because they’re trying to apply (often without realizing it) the old sport's skill to the new sport. That’s negative transference, and it is, as the name so strongly suggests, a bad thing.
I was talking with Redbird Flight Simulation’s Charlie Gregoire the other day about how different people perform differently the first time they hop into a sim. My adult son, Quin, who is not a pilot, was trying his hand at Redbird’s full-motion FMX high-wing G1000 simulator (okay, it’s a Skyhawk) and was doing a remarkably good job of holding heading and altitude, a much better job, in fact, than many experienced pilots do when they climb into the box for the first time.
I was quick to point out that the simulator flies very differently from the actual airplane, a point that is not in dispute. The same is true for every sim. The difference is in degree.
But Charlie was just as quick to point out that this was NOT a case of “negative transference,” a term that he says gets used a lot by people in the flight training business to discuss the effects of using simulators in conjunction with flight training. (For the record, I didn't use the term myself, but he has, he said, heard it so often it has stuck in his craw . . . so I guess he felt like venting a little.) In any case, Charlie’s point was that every airplane flies differently from every other airplane, and he’s right. Try to use the same skills to fly a Gulfstream as you do to fly a Blanek sailplane and you’re going to be in trouble very quickly, and vice versa. You need to modify your piloting technique to fit the platform. Pilots who've flown a lot of different kinds of airplanes know this intuitively.
Negative transference, Charlie argued, would take place if, for instance, the controls were reversed in the sim, so left aileron input resulted in a right turn. As it is, left input gives you a left turn. No negative transference there.
You could make the case, in fact, that there’s more negative transference taking place when a pilot moves from a Bonanza to an LSA, for example, than when that same pilot moves from a Bonanza sim to a Bonanza.
The sim model is proven. I got my CitationJet type rating in a Level C sim at SimCom last year without ever getting into the actual airplane and I found that once I did start flying an actual CJ in the actual national airspace system, I was never once tempted to turn around and ask the instructor to make the weather a little less cloudy.
Are there potentially negative transference issues going from a sim to an airplane? Sure. Potentially. The student pilot could crash while looking for the pause button, for example. The fact is, though, that this does not happen. Student pilots, and pilots in general, are a lot smarter than some instructors give them credit for being.
All Comments
As the owner of a general-aviation simulator based training center,
I believe that negative transference is a little more subtle and insidious
than is portrayed in this article. Certainly, there are obvious forms of negative transference as you point out.
However, there are more sinister types that need to be addressed for GA pilots
to avoid the risk of negative transference. Calling a simulator a "box" is
just one example. At our center, we refer to the device during training as
the airplane. The expectation is set from the start - the pilot or crew is
to operate it as if they were flying an actual airplane. Any other euphemism
is an open invitation to deviate from SOPs used in the airplane. How many times
I have heard "I would never do that in an airplane."
Speaking of SOPs, that is another serious source of negative transference.
There is a tendency for pilots training in a device to lose discipline, for
there is no real threat to loss of life or equipment as there is an airplane.
Again, we don't fly simulators - we fly airplanes.
There are many other culprits, one being ATC phraseology. This is typically an
instructor oversight, but failure to consistently use proper phraseology can be
a significant source of negative transference in the airplane - especially to
a new instrument pilot.
As the old adage goes, Train the way you Fly, Fly the Way you Train.
Cary Green
Avia
www.avia-ifr.com
I don't think any of the things you mention are examples of negative transference, and none of them are a result of the sim not being up to snuff in any way. They are examples of poor training practices having a bad effect on the students--we've all seen these things happen. Your comments about using proper phraseology is right on the money. You're smart to nip bad practices in the bud and insist on doing things right. Kudos.
Nice article. Same concept, different angle: I've come to real flying in my 30s after more than 2 decades of flight simming. From the moment of the first take off, I had ingrained, correct reflexes with regard to stick and rudder skills (well, mainly stick). The negative transference aspect has been in everything to do with safety and making sure. Checklists, memory items and NOT flying at treetop height have all been onerous aspects of real flying that I've psychologically rebelled against. All those times I started the game, hit the throttle and simply took off have really affected my approach to flying. So much so that, after completing the limited licence, I've taken time off to get my head right. Now I'm back and about to recommence the process of PPL, CPL etc and part of that has been to treat every simulator flight like a real one - including checking the real wx. I still like to land my F/A-18 on SABA though :-)
Off-topic, but the early statement "Since I’m a boy let me talk about sports:" influenced how I read the remainder of the article. Inferring that talking about sports is something that "all guys do" and "all girls don't" is a bit single-minded. Now guess if I'm male or female.
I'd add another negative transference, head in cockpit and eyes on instruments. While upscale sims may have wraparound visuals, I'd estimate 98% of GA Simulators/FTD have no peripheral visual,s so learning turns about a point or other outside reference maneuvers ingrain flying with your head in the cockpit. I'd be interested how Redbird training and others work around this.
As an aside, 25 years ago I decided to get my lapsed CIFI back. The instructor I was flying with was very helpful and I was progressing nicely, but he wanted me to changed the way I did lazy-eights and chandelles so he took the controls for a show and tell. That was the first and last time I'd seen someone do these maneuvers solely by instruments, never looked outside.
Redbird's simulators do quite well for ground reference maneuvers. The screens give a very natural visual feedback.
I had the opportunity to try them out an AOPAactual townhall meeting a few months back.
I've spent thousands of hours in a Debonair (old straight tailed Bonanza) and many, many hours in sims and even "flight sims". I really can't think of any spot in there that I'd call negative transference.
However I can think of on mighty noticeable one when going from a Cessna 172, Cherokee, or most any light plane simulator, or eve LSA to the Bo. I've let many pilots fly the Deb and many who were planning on upgrading to high performance, complex.
I'd take off, climb up to altitude and do a few maneuvers with commentary before giving them the controls. Almost invariably we'd be in a PIO in less than a minute after they took the controls. One friend who had many hours in the same Cherokee 180 I used to fly looked at me with exasperation showing. He said I know what's happening, I know what to do, but when I do it, it just gets worse. My answer was of course the old, "If what you do makes it worse then don't do it!"
Many and I do mean "a lot" of pilots learn to watch the VSI which is a trend instrument, instead of the altimeter. You can get away with this in many if not most older, fixed gear airplanes. I'd not want to try it in a Cirrus which is a high performance airplane with the feet still sticking out. It does not work for most people in high performance because there is lag built into the readout.
It's relatively easy to demonstrate 2 Gs out of the bottom and Zeeeroooo over the top and keep the needle of the GSI centered.
I usually go back to level flight, ask them to note where the horizon is in the windshield and to keep it there. Glance at the altimeter now and then to make sure you are holding altitude. If you are losing a little altitude, then lower the horizon in the windshield " slightly" and see what happens. Very basic things we should have all learned in primary training, but sometimes those shortcuts we learn aren't really the best options. I used to fly a lot and I'd make sure to fly with an instructor several times a year just to make sure I wasn't picking up any bad habits. The same with recurrency training, or the Air Safety Foundation Bo specific training.
However one of those little humility builders...The Deb was in for its annual and I rented a 172 for a trip. During the checkout, the first turn I made was memorable. I rolled the plane left and the nose went right. The instructor, who I knew well, just sat over there laughing after remarking, "you do remember what a rudder is for? Right?. To which I replied, "A plane that requires you to use the rudder? How quaint!" For over a thousand hours I'd been flying planes that had interconnected ailerons and rudder. Both the Beech and Pipers and particularly the old tri-pacer had a very heavy interconnect. Another case of negative transference. <:-))
