Abstract
Detecting task-relevant changes in a visual scene is necessary for successfully monitoring and managing dynamic command and control situations. Change blindness—the failure to notice visual changes—is an important source of human error. Change History EXplicit (CHEX) is a tool developed to aid change detection and maintain situation awareness; and in the current study we test the generality of its ability to facilitate the detection of changes when this subtask is embedded within a broader dynamic decision-making task. A multitasking air-warfare simulation required participants to perform radar-based subtasks, for which change detection was a necessary aspect of the higher-order goal of protecting one’s own ship. In this task, however, CHEX rendered the operator even more vulnerable to attentional failures in change detection and increased perceived workload. Such support was only effective when participants performed a change detection task without concurrent subtasks. Results are interpreted in terms of the NSEEV model of attention behavior (Steelman, McCarley, & Wickens, Hum. Factors 53:142–153, 2011; J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 19:403–419, 2013), and suggest that decision aids for use in multitasking contexts must be designed to fit within the available workload capacity of the user so that they may truly augment cognition.
Highlights
The ability to discern pertinent objects and events in our environment is essential to a multitude of everyday activities, such as driving and air traffic control
Overall change detection Overall, 14.9% of critical changes were missed in the Change History EXplicit (CHEX) group and 13.17% in the control group (Fig. 3a), confirming the finding that complex, dynamic situations are vulnerable to change blindness (CB)
The current study suggests that decision aids for use in multitasking contexts must be designed to fit within the available workload capacity of the user and the timeliness of the situation so that they may truly augment cognition
Summary
The ability to discern pertinent objects and events in our environment is essential to a multitude of everyday activities, such as driving and air traffic control A driver, for example, must constantly monitor the unfolding dynamic visual scene for incoming traffic and changing road signs in order to drive safely and avoid hazards (Horswill & McKenna, 2004). The failure to detect task-relevant changes in a Vallières et al Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2016) 1:32 visual scene, often referred to as change blindness (CB; Rensink, Regan, & Clark, 1997), is the source of many human errors; in complex and dynamic situations, in particular, the high volume of information to monitor can overload the operator leaving critical incidents unnoticed and in turn reduce decision-making quality (Durlach, 2004; Varakin, Levin, & Fidler, 2004). Using a cognitive and holistic approach will enable us to assess the impact of this type of tool on all the aspects of the wider task environment (including change detection performance) and to further investigate the sources of attentional failures in dynamic situations
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