Audio-visual conflict: from basics to cockpit inattentional deafness, by Sebastien Scannella

Summary:

The human cognitive system receives environmental information through multiple sensory channels. Most of the time, the channels provide congruent content, the integration of which helps to build a unified perception of the world. Sometimes, the environment provides inconsistent stimuli that prevent from an efficient interpretation. These situations may induce a conflict associated with a behavioural cost and disastrous consequences such as an airplane accident. The research presented here focuses and one of its consequences: the insensitivity to auditory alarms sometimes observed in pilots. We investigated the electrophysiological correlates of this conflict from well controlled lab tasks to realistic airplane environment.

Short Biography:

Sébastien Scannella is a research scientist in Neuroergonomics at ISAE-Supaéro (Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace) in Toulouse since 2012. During his PhD thesis in Neuroscience he investigated the spatial audio-visual conflict effects over auditory perception using EEG with healthy and stroke patients at INSERM (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale). His main current work focuses on understanding theses effects within realistic environments such as flight simulators and real aircrafts.