Effects of Human Behavior and Communication on the Learning Process

Three complementary definitions (AIH ch. 2):

• The product of factors that cause people to act in predictable ways — the scientific view
• The result of attempts to satisfy needs, from simple (food, water) to complex (respect, acceptance)
• A product of human development — the successive phases of growth, each with its own physical, physiological, and behavioral features

Practical payoff: behavior you find baffling in a learner is usually an unmet need or a predictable response to threat, not a character defect.

Motivation is the reason a person acts or behaves in a certain way — probably the dominant force governing a learner's progress (AIH ch. 2).

• Positive motivation — the promise or achievement of rewards: personal gain, self-esteem, group approval, public recognition
• Negative motivation — engenders fear; it is not as effective in promoting efficient learning and should be avoided with all but the most overconfident and impulsive learners
• Motivation may be tangible (money, a job) or intangible (comfort, security, group approval, a favorable self-image)

Motivation does not remain uniformly high. Slumps in learning are often due to declining motivation, so detect and counter lapses. The AIH's five instructor actions for keeping a learner working hard:

1. Ask new learners about their aviation training goals
2. Reward incremental successes in learning
3. Present new challenges
4. Occasionally remind learners of their own stated goals
5. Assure learners that learning plateaus are normal and improvement resumes with continued effort

Maslow's Hierarchy (1954) runs physiological, security, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, with cognitive and aesthetic needs added later (AIH ch. 2).

The 8083-9B revision is careful here: Maslow's hierarchy has little to no empirical support (cited in the AIH as “Whaba and Bridgewell, 1976”; the underlying paper is Wahba & Bridwell, 1976), and a 2011 University of Illinois study found the order needs are met has little effect on satisfaction. What research does support is that unmet needs affect the focus of perceptions — a hungry learner attends to hunger, an anxious learner attends to the "flee" response, not to your stall demonstration.

So the instructor's job isn't to fill the pyramid bottom-up; it's to verify enough needs are met (law of readiness) that you can focus the learner's senses on the lesson.

An ego defense mechanism (Freud, 1894) is an unconscious mental process that protects a person from anxiety or unpleasant emotions, or provides refuge from a situation the individual cannot currently cope with (AIH ch. 2).

Two shared properties: they often appear unconsciously, and they distort, transform, or otherwise falsify reality.

Because reality is distorted, perception changes, anxiety lessens — but they alleviate symptoms, not causes, and solve nothing.

• Repression — pushing uncomfortable thoughts into the unconscious; a learner with a repressed fear of flying
• Denial (and its cousin minimization) — refusing to accept reality; the learner denies leaving a water bottle under the rudder pedal, or admits it but says nothing bad happened
• Compensation — counterbalancing a weakness by emphasizing strength elsewhere
• Projection — placing blame on others; "I failed because I had a poor examiner"
• Rationalization — sincere but false justification; "I didn't have enough time to study" from a learner who skipped the study group
• Reaction formation — faking the opposite belief; a who-cares attitude covering a hunger for acceptance
• Fantasy — daydreaming about being an airline pilot instead of mastering the complex airplane
• Displacement — shifting emotion to a safer target; anger at the instructor taken out elsewhere

(AIH ch. 2)

If you believe a learner may have a serious psychological abnormality:

1. Refrain from instructing that learner
2. Arrange for another instructor who does not know the learner to conduct an evaluation flight, then confer
3. Withhold the solo endorsement and the practical-test recommendation — your primary legal responsibility is that decision

Signs to watch for:

• Inappropriate reactions — extreme over-cooperation, painstaking self-control, inappropriate laughter or singing, very rapid mood swings
• Marked mood changes across lessons — excellent morale followed by deep depression
• Severe anger directed at the instructor or others

None is an absolute indication, but any of them under stress warrants careful evaluation (AIH ch. 2).

For lesser problems, use common sense, discuss it with the learner, aim to restore motivation and self-confidence, and in severe cases recommend a professional counselor. The human psyche is fragile and can be damaged by inept measures.

• Anxiety — the most significant psychological factor affecting flight instruction; the fear of falling is universal. Responses range from hesitancy to freezing to acting without reason
• Impatience — wanting to solo or go cross-country before the basics are learned; also caused by pacing a fast learner to a slow learner's syllabus
• Worry or lack of interest — learners who are worried or emotionally upset are not ready to learn
• Physical discomfort, illness, fatigue, and dehydration — including airsickness
• Apathy due to inadequate instruction — learners disengage the moment they sense you didn't prepare

(AIH ch. 2)

Treat fears as a normal reaction rather than ignoring them, and reinforce the learner's enjoyment of flying (AIH ch. 2). Anxiety is usually attached to specific maneuvers, so introduce those maneuvers with care:

1. Review the aerodynamic principles first and explain how stalls affect flight characteristics
2. Describe the physical sensations to expect — buffet, sink, nose drop, the sound of the horn
3. Describe the recovery procedure so the learner knows what their reaction should be
4. Break the maneuver into stages — demonstrate an impending stall before a full stall — and let the learner build a comfort level

Frame safe practices as conducive to satisfying, uninterrupted flying, not as the only thing standing between the learner and catastrophe.

Airsickness is a great deterrent to flight instruction — an airsick learner cannot learn at a normal rate (AIH ch. 2).

• Terminate the instructional flight as soon as incipient sickness appears
• Resistance or immunity usually develops in a relatively short time; lengthen flights as it does
• Keep the learner interested and occupied — they're much less apt to become airsick while flying the airplane themselves
• Fresh air across the face helps
• Avoid rough air and unexpected abrupt maneuvers; tension and apprehension contribute

• Source — the sender, speaker, writer, encoder, transmitter, or instructor
• Symbols — the oral, visual, or tactile codes used to compose and transmit the message
• Receiver — the listener, reader, decoder, or learner

They are dynamically interrelated and depend on a two-way flow of symbols. Communication is effective only to the degree that the idea received matches the idea transmitted — measured by the receiver's reaction, not by whether you said the words (AIH ch. 4).

• Lack of common experience — the greatest single barrier. Words do not carry meaning; they are stimuli that arouse a response based on the learner's own experience
• Confusion between the symbol and the symbolized object — the word confused with what it represents ("mechanic" versus what an AMT actually is)
• Overuse of abstractions — "aircraft" calls up an airplane for one learner, a helicopter for another; say "conduct a go-around," not "take appropriate measures"
• External factors — physiological (hearing loss, illness), environmental (cabin noise, vibration), and psychological (fear, mistrust, either party not committed to the exchange)

Also watch for interference, where the message is disrupted, truncated, or added to somewhere in the sequence (AIH ch. 4).

Communication skills do not occur automatically; they come from experience (AIH ch. 4):

• Role playing — during CFI training, a flight instructor plays the learner, duplicates known learner responses, and critiques your instruction. Expect this on the checkride itself
• Instructional communication — teach what you know well; use personal experience to illustrate, but exercise restraint so it doesn't become a "there I was" story
• Listening — listening is hearing with comprehension; teach your learners to listen too
• Questioning — ask focused, open-ended questions ("why," "how"); closed-ended questions evaluate only at the rote level
• Instructional enhancement — the more you know, the better you convey it, and the more confident the presentation

Learners whose styles are compatible with the instructor's teaching style retain information longer, apply it more effectively, learn more, and hold a more positive attitude toward the course (AIH ch. 2).

You generally cannot change your preferred teaching style — most new instructors teach the way they were taught, or the way they themselves learn best. But you can actively bridge the difference: recognize your own style, observe the learner's, and adapt the delivery. The handbook's example is an instructor whose default is a rigid step-by-step syllabus teaching a thrill-seeking learner; he restructures the lesson as a scenario (scouting locations for adventure tours) that carries the same content but engages the learner's actual motivation.

System 1: fast, automatic, emotional, and unconscious — the gut reaction built from memory and experience. System 2: slow, logical, deliberate, and effortful (AIH ch. 2).

The instructional risk: humans are inherently lazy about System 2, so a learner may assume a complex problem is a simple one, or assume that because a recent solution worked, the same solution fits a similar-looking task. Watch for it when a learner pattern-matches a new situation to a familiar one — an unfamiliar airport treated like the home field, a heavier airplane flown with the trainer's numbers.

The average aviation learner is about 30 years old (AIH ch. 2), so adult learning theory (Knowles) applies. Adults:

• Seek learning because they have a use for it — learning is a means to an end
• Are autonomous and self-directed; they need independence and control
• Bring a reservoir of life experience to draw on
• Are goal-oriented, relevancy-oriented, and practical
• Need to be shown respect; self-esteem is a strong secondary motivator
• Want to solve problems and apply knowledge immediately

Instructor responses:

• Provide a syllabus with clearly defined objectives
• Help them integrate new ideas with what they already know
• Recognize their need to control pace and start/stop time
• Give frequent scenario-based training opportunities
• Set a cooperative climate
• Refrain from spoon-feeding

Acute fatigue is characterized by these signs, apparent to others before the individual notices anything (AIH ch. 2):

• Inattention
• Distractibility
• Errors in timing
• Neglect of secondary tasks
• Loss of accuracy and control
• Lack of awareness of error accumulation
• Irritability

Fatigue is the primary consideration in determining the length and frequency of flight instruction periods. Continue instruction only as long as the learner is alert, receptive, and performing consistently with experience. If fatigue results from the learning task itself, give a break in instruction and practice.

Chronic fatigue is different — it comes from repeated acute episodes without full recovery, has psychological roots (financial, home, job stress), and rest alone may not resolve it. Judgment becomes impaired and unwarranted risks get taken.

Learners become apathetic when they recognize that the instructor made inadequate preparation, or when instruction appears deficient, contradictory, or insincere. Even an inexperienced learner realizes immediately when the instructor has failed to prepare a lesson (AIH ch. 2).

The other half is level: instruction can be overly complicated, too elementary, or so general it evokes no interest. Teach for the level of the learner — a preflight inspection lesson for an experienced AMT looks nothing like the same lesson for a learner with no aviation background, even though the content is identical.

Poor presentations also come from distracting mannerisms, personal untidiness, and the appearance of irritation. Talking down to a learner is one of the fastest ways to lose confidence and attention — and once lost, it's difficult to regain.

Symbols are perceived through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic channels, and using a variety of them gains and holds attention (AIH ch. 4).

The handbook's example is trim: instead of telling the learner to "adjust the trim," move the trim wheel yourself while the learner tries to hold an attitude. The learner feels the control pressure change (kinesthetic) while you name what they're feeling (auditory) and they see the attitude hold (visual). After that, "trim off the pressure" means something.

For teaching motor skills, the sense of touch is added as the learner practices — which is exactly why the demonstration-performance method works in an airplane and a lecture does not.

Negative feedback should be used carefully (AIH ch. 4):

• Deliver it only in private to avoid embarrassing the learner
• State it as a description of actual performance, in a nonjudgmental manner
• Attack the work, never the person — telling a maintenance learner a safety wire installation is unsatisfactory is fine; calling the work "careless" harms their feeling of self-worth

Positive feedback does double duty: it informs the learner of performance and serves as a source of motivation, building self-confidence and reinforcing favorable behavior.

Two techniques confirm that you and the learner understand each other the same way: paraphrasing — restating what the learner said so they can correct or expand it — and perception checking — stating your perception of their behavior or feelings so they can clarify. Both beat "do you understand?", a yes/no question that tells you nothing.