This work examined the effects of operators' exposure to various types of automation failures in training. Forty-five participants were trained for 3.5 h on a simulated process control environment. During training, participants either experienced a fully reliable, automatic fault repair facility (i.e. faults detected and correctly diagnosed), a misdiagnosis-prone one (i.e. faults detected but not correctly diagnosed) or a miss-prone one (i.e. faults not detected). One week after training, participants were tested for 3 h, experiencing two types of automation failures (misdiagnosis, miss). The results showed that automation bias was very high when operators trained on miss-prone automation encountered a failure of the diagnostic system. Operator errors resulting from automation bias were much higher when automation misdiagnosed a fault than when it missed one. Differences in trust levels that were instilled by the different training experiences disappeared during the testing session. Practitioner Summary: The experience of automation failures during training has some consequences. A greater potential for operator errors may be expected when an automatic system failed to diagnose a fault than when it failed to detect one.
The present study evaluated three automation modes for improving performance in an X-ray luggage screening task. 140 participants were asked to detect the presence of prohibited items in X-ray images of cabin luggage. Twenty participants conducted this task without automatic support (control group), whereas the others worked with either indirect cues (system indicated the target presence without specifying its location), or direct cues (system pointed out the exact target location) or adaptable automation (participants could freely choose between no cue, direct and indirect cues). Furthermore, automatic support reliability was manipulated (low vs. high). The results showed a clear advantage for direct cues regarding detection performance and response time. No benefits were observed for adaptable automation. Finally, high automation reliability led to better performance and higher operator trust. The findings overall confirmed that automatic support systems for luggage screening should be designed such that they provide direct, highly reliable cues.
Understanding our visual world requires both looking and seeing. Dissociation of these processes can result in the phenomenon of inattentional blindness or ‘looking without seeing‘. Concomitant errors in applied settings can be serious, and even deadly. Current visual data analysis cannot differentiate between just ‘looking‘ and actual processing of visual information, i.e., ‘seeing‘. Differentiation may be possible through the examination of microsaccades; the involuntary, small-magnitude saccadic eye movements that occur during processed visual fixation. Recent work has suggested that microsaccades are post-attentional biosignals, potentially modulated by task. Specifically, microsaccade rates decrease with increased mental task demand, and increase with growing visual task difficulty. Such findings imply that there are fundamental differences in microsaccadic activity between visual and nonvisual tasks. To evaluate this proposition, we used a high-speed eye tracker to record participants in looking for differences between two images or, doing mental arithmetic, or both tasks in combination. Results showed that microsaccade rate was significantly increased in conditions that require high visual attention, and decreased in conditions that require less visual attention. The results support microsaccadic rate reflecting visual attention, and level of visual information processing. A measure that reflects to what extent and how an operator is processing visual information represents a critical step for the application of sophisticated visual assessment to real world tasks.
X-ray screening of passenger baggage is a key component in aviation security. The current study investigated how experts and novices performed in an X-ray baggage screening task while being assisted by an adaptable diagnostic aid. Furthermore, it examined how both groups operated and trusted this automated system. 30 experts (certified screeners) and 31 novices (students) had to indicate whether a target item (either a knife or a gun) was present in a series of X-ray images of cabin baggage. Half of the participants could choose between three different support levels of the diagnostic aid (DA): (1) no support, (2) a cue indicating the presence of a potential target without locating it, or (3) a cue indicating the presence of a potential target by surrounding it with a red frame. As expected, experts achieved higher detection performance (d’), were more self-confident and felt more competent in achieving the task than novices. Furthermore, experts experienced less time pressure and fatigue. Although both groups used the DA in a comparable way (in terms of support level used and frequency of level switches), results showed a performance increase for novices working with the DA compared to novices without support. This benefit of DA was not observed for experts. Interestingly, despite no difference in perceived trust ratings, experts were more compliant (i.e., following DA recommendations when it indicated the presence of a target) and reliant (i.e., following DA recommendations when it indicated the absence of a target) than novices. Altogether, the results of the present study suggested that novices benefited more from a DA than experts. Furthermore, compliance and reliance on DA seemed to depend on expertise with the task. Since experts should be better at assessing the reliability of the DA than novices, they may have used the DA as ‘back-up’ to confirm their decisions based on expertise (confirmatory function), while novices may have used it as a guide to base their decisions on (support function). Finally, trust towards a DA was associated with the degree to which participants found the DA useful.
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