Calibration of Confidence in Situation Awareness Queries

Abstract

Two experiments using a simulated Air Traffic Control task were conducted to examine the relationship between situation awareness and confidence under conditions of high and low temporal and perceptual demand. In the first experiment, participants were required to actively manipulate the aircraft on the radar screen. In the second experiment, the participants were required to passively observe the simulated air traffic. In both experiments, Endsley's SAGAT was used to query the subjects' SA and confidence in their responses. The results of this study revealed that whereas SA was affected primarily by perceptual demand, confidence was affected by both time pressure and workload. Moreover, the participants' under/overconfidence was affected primarily by perceptual demand. However, the participants were clearly overconfident in response to difficult SA queries and predominantly underconfident to easy SA queries. These results have implications for our understanding of the relationship between SA and performance in aviation research.