Abstract
The topic of situation awareness has received continuing interest over the last decades. Freeze-probe methods, such as the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT), are commonly employed for measuring situation awareness. The aim of this paper was to review validity issues of the SAGAT and examine whether eye movements are a promising alternative for measuring situation awareness. First, we outlined six problems of freeze-probe methods, such as the fact that freeze-probe methods rely on what the operator has been able to remember and then explicitly recall. We propose an operationalization of situation awareness based on the eye movements of the person in relation to their task environment to circumvent shortfalls of memory mediation and task interruption. Next, we analyzed experimental data in which participants (N = 86) were tasked to observe a display of six dials for about 10 min, and press the space bar if a dial pointer crossed a threshold value. Every 90 s, the screen was blanked and participants had to report the state of the dials on a paper sheet. We assessed correlations of participants’ task performance (% of threshold crossing detected) with visual sampling scores (% of dials glanced at during threshold crossings) and freeze-probe scores. Results showed that the visual-sampling score correlated with task performance at the threshold-crossing level (r = 0.31) and at the individual level (r = 0.78). Freeze-probe scores were low and showed weak associations with task performance. We conclude that the outlined limitations of the SAGAT impede measurement of situation awareness, which can be computed more effectively from eye movement measurements in relation to the state of the task environment. The present findings have practical value, as advances in eye-tracking cameras and ubiquitous computing lessen the need for interruptive tests such as SAGAT. Eye-based situation awareness is a predictor of performance, with the advantage that it is applicable through real-time feedback technologies.
Highlights
1.1 Situation awarenessDuring the last three decades, an extensive body of research has appeared concerning situation awareness (SA)
The research question that this paper sets out to answer is: “What are the limitations of Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT)?”, and secondly: “Is an alternative body-based measure of SA more predictive of task performance than a freeze-probe method?” we propose here that SA can alternatively be operationalized via eye movements of the operator in relation to the task environment
We argued that the SAGAT has the following limitations: (1) time delays between the freeze moment and the moment of answering the queries, (2) task interruption/disruption, (3) a disconnect from the ongoing task, (4) the need to bring the situation to conscious memory, (5) intermittent rather than continuous SA measurement, and (6) a failure to take situated cognition into account
Summary
During the last three decades, an extensive body of research has appeared concerning situation awareness (SA). SA was initially characterized as “the buzzword of the ‘90s’” (Pew 1994), the term is firmly embedded into the vocabulary of human factors and ergonomics. The construct of SA has received “strong endorsement” 90) and is regarded as valuable in the research community (Parasuraman et al 2008). Interest in SA can be attributed to the fact that systems have become increasingly complex and automated (Hancock 2014; Parasuraman et al 2008; Stanton et al 2017).
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