Sorry I've only just got round to this but thanks very much to everyone who's offered their thoughts, it really is appreciated.
Soaring steph, sounds like an interesting topic you have there. OverRun has given some great advice on this thread, so I'm sure reading through that will help you. The thing I've found particularly useful for info/references etc is my University's "e-library" where you can access articles, journals, papers and the like online, all free of charge (the Uni' pays thousands to subscribe to all the stuff on there). If your University has a similar system, and I believe most do, then I'd point you in that direction. Best of luck with it!
Meanwhile, for anyone who's interested, here's an update as to where I'm at... Having looked into the pilot vs automation authority issue, I've chosen to do my project on this and am currently conducting my literature review. I'm finding many issues arising within this argument, such as the loss of manual skills, situational awareness, vigilance, increased complacency (or conversely, distrust in automated systems, largely depending on their operational reliability), the shift from active information processing to passive information receiving, changes in the amount or type of feedback provided to the pilot etc etc, that all result from the introduction of automation in the cockpit. Due to the relatively short time period I have available to complete the work, I'm thinking about focussing in on just one or two of these issues to cover in detail, although which ones I've not yet decided.
Most studies come to the conclusion that a certain level of automation authority results in better overall performance of the human-machine system, compared with a system that gives the human total authority. However there is a point beyond which the share of authority goes too far in favour of the machine, resulting in degraded pilot performance when the automation breaks down.
One thing I have noticed is that most of these studies (at least the ones I have come across) have used students or other non-aviation-affiliated people as test subjects, and hence don't take into consideration the flight deck crew's perception of their loss of authority. It is notable from some of the comments made on this thread that a reduction in pilot authority is generally perceived as a negative thing. I would think most pilots won't be too happy at the thought of having to surrender some proportion of their command to a computer. Whether this has any effect in the real world is not clear, and something which might merit my attention.
At Salford University I am lucky in that I have access to their FNPT II sim and my project supervisor has said there'd be no problem with throwing some current pilots in there and running an experiment on them. I'm not sure as yet what experiment I could devise that would give meaningful data, and so am thinking of leaving that possibility until the second half of the project after xmas. In the meantime I am thinking along the lines of circulating questionnaires among pilots to try and get a feel for their perceptions of issues surrounding increased automation. Including a couple of accident case studies in my report that highlight some of the issues I outlined earlier is something else I'm considering too. Based on what I find from those things I'll look at whether I could come up with a flight sim experiment that would add value to the project.
I'll keep you updated as more progress is made; in the meantime if you have any more input, it'd be warmly received!
Cheers,
Mike.