Effects of Automated Conflict Cuing and Traffic Density on Air Traffic Controller Performance and Visual Attention in a Datalink Environment

Abstract

Proposals to enhance the efficiency and capacity of the air traffic control system involve new technologies such as automated decision aids and datalink that could create additional demands for the limited visual attentional resources of controllers. This study investigated whether automated multimodal conflict cues could mitigate these demands, particularly under high-traffic load. Measures of conflict detection performance and eye movements were obtained from full performance controllers in a simulated air traffic control task with datalink. It was hypothesized that multimodal cuing would improve advance notification of conflicts and lead to earlier detection than purely visual cuing by better guiding visual attention. High-traffic density had significantly negative effects on performance. However, although cuing enhanced performance, no specific benefit of multimodal cuing for performance or visual attention was found. Implications for controller visual attention and for the design of automated decision aids are discussed.