The cognitive capacities of a human agent are significantly impoverished when operating under severe temporal and emotional stress. Currently, human-machine interaction under these circumstances is being informed by classical cognitive models, which treat the human agent as having a repertoire of undiminished cognitive capacities consisting of semantic, symbolic, and inferential reasoning abilities. Such an approach is unsuited when an agent’s mental capacities are reduced to simple perception-action mechanisms, due to functional decortication, under severe stress. Gibson’s direct perception provides a partial answer to this problem. This paper attempts to provide a more robust answer by putting direct perception under the light of recent advances made in human-machine interaction design and theory, neurosciences and embodied cognition. This resulted in the development of a model for human-machine interaction called Direct Perception-Action Coupling (DPAC). This model can be applied to inform the design of critical human-machine interactions that need to be flawlessly performed, often times under stress, to prevent catastrophic outcomes.
Mission critical domains (MCDs), such as fire fighting, military combat, etc., experience periods of nonequilibrium. This typically occurs when extended periods of low grade activity are punctuated by intense, high stakes actions unfolding at high velocities (e.g., fighting a fire, engaging in combat, etc.). These periods of nonequilibrium are typically characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Human agents operating under these conditions experience a variety of reactions, such as emotional modulation of cognition, recognition primed decision making, among others. To study this phenomenon a construct named High Velocity Human Factors (HVHF) is defined and described. On the practical side, the HVHF framework will be used to analyze demands placed on personnel operating in MCDs and inform the design of systems and solutions.
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