ABSTRACT
As noted in the introduction in Chapter 1, aviation psychology is closely related to the field known as human factors. In recent years the distinction among aviation psychology, human factors, and the more hardware-oriented discipline of engineering psychology has become very blurred, with practitioners claiming allegiance to the disciplines performing very similar research and applying their knowledge in very similar ways. Traditionally, engineering psychology might be thought of as focusing more on humans and human factors might focus somewhat more on hardware and its interface with the human operator. For all practical purposes, however, the distinction between the two disciplines is irrelevant. It is mentioned here only to alert the reader to the terminology because much of what we would label as aviation psychology is published in books and journals labeled as human factors.
