Mariners' adaptive performance under stress

“Mariners´ Adaptive Performance under Stress” focuses on the research question of direct and indirect effects of varying conditions of task-integral cognitive and affective demands on adaptive performance of novice bridge operators. The work draws theoretically on contextual models of cognition as well as appraisal theoretical frameworks of affect elicitation and experience. The respective research hypotheses reflect expected individual and team-related adaptive responses at and after the onset of ambiguous trigger events with a prominent affective component when performing a complex ship management task. Adaptive performance was measured by means of behavioural parameters with a relevance to normal and critical operations: Visual behaviour of officers of the watch, Threat and Error Management and Non-Technical Skill performance of bridge crews, and risk-related crew decision-making. Additional surveys were employed for the assessment of the task-related affective states and trigger event appraisals. The results suggest that the observed adaptive performance, especially on the team level, is strongly affected by the co-occurrence of constraining context conditions and the conspicuousness of the affective component of emerging events. Consequently, the work argues for an integrated approach towards combining cognition and affect for modelling human behaviour in dynamic environments. It showcases the need for further research of cognition, affect and their combined effects in the naturalistic context of work in order to comprehend the behaviour of the human element in practice beyond the obscuring veil of hindsight and outcome-based evaluations.