Inside the cognitive workplace: New technology and air traffic control

This dissertation uses a cognitive framework to describe a complex system. I undertook fieldwork to study an air traffic control subsystem, traffic management, during a period of rapid change. This research was chosen for two reasons. NASA's introduction of the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) tool into a Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) provided an opportunity to observe before and after a resource change. Second, understanding this adaptation is important for understanding and predicting the cognitive consequences of introducing new technology into complex systems.;Analyzing traffic management as an information processing system provides a detailed model of how the system solves its problems--what resources it uses and how they are used. I use this model to explain one adaptation: an apparent reduction in communication between the TRACON and an EnRoute Center. Two important components affecting the system's adaptation are: (a) the set of beliefs that facility participants hold about the other facility, and (b) how these beliefs and functional differences between the facilities affect the operation of the system.;The reduction in communication is part of a larger pattern of changes involving the allocation of functions among available resources. The TMA tool provides a new source of information to the TRACON. Some of this information used to come from the Center via the phone, while other information was unavailable. This frees use of the phone for the negotiation of a new understanding between the system participants in each facility.;There are two results: First, TMA provides information that helps each facility understand the functions of the other facility better. This leads to a change in beliefs about the other facility's members. Second, this change in beliefs leads to the change in communication--an adaptation in system operation with no ill effects. This adaptation cannot be understood completely by either a computational, cognitive, or technological analysis. Social, cultural and organizational factors are involved in the adaptation. Understanding their effects helps make clear how and why the adaptations occur. Descriptions and understandings of situations such as these are needed before we can predict the cognitive consequences of technological changes to complex systems.