Refining the perceptual cycle model to explore aeronautical decision making

The Perceptual Cycle Model presents a process-orientated approach to understanding decision making by exploring the interaction between a person's cognitive schema, the actions they undertake and information available in the world. This Early Stage Research (ESR) paper presents the work being undertaken to refine the key elements of this model in order to gain a deeper understanding of aeronautical decision making. This has been achieved via the generation of a classification scheme based on critical incident data from twenty helicopter pilots. As an ESR paper the work is still in progress and therefore options for data analysis, potential applications of the research and avenues for future work are discussed.