A Situated Approach to the Understanding of Dynamic Situations

Abstract

Situation awareness (SA) is an operator's understanding of "what is going on" as he or she manages a complex, dynamic system. In what follows, the case for a situated approach to SA is presented. It claims operators rely on interactions between internal and external representations to maintain their understanding of situations. It is argued that this approach allows researchers to capture two different types of SA-one where operators store SA information directly and one where the information is offloaded but the operator internally represents where to access it from the world and can do so quickly. This position takes a broader unit of analysis on SA than the widely cited Three-Level Model, which claims that only if information is stored internally does it count as SA. We also discuss how to assess SA in situated agents, focusing on the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM). We end by discussing some of the potentially fruitful research questions that arise as a result of taking a situated approach as well as implications for interface design.

Final Reflections

“…He also discusses the interesting roles of long-term memory (LTM), working memory (WM), and long-term working memory (LTWM) and how they relate to SA. In that my model (and subsequent research findings) supports an integrated model of LTM and WM (per Cowan, 1988) and Durso and Gronlund (1999) also calls out an integrated model (per Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995), it would seem that more research would be warranted here as well, perhaps addressing the concerns of Chiappe, Strybel, and Vu (2015) as people move from being novices to experts. Vidulich and Tsang (2015) discuss the need to consider both SA and workload when developing potential operator decision aids, which I certainly agree with.…”

“…Other concerns were directed at the SAGAT technique in general, which uses short freezes in a simulation to provide queries about SA, questioning whether it relies too heavily on memory (Chiappe, Rorie, Moran, & Vu, 2012;Durso et al, 1998;Salmon, Stanton, & Young, 2011;Sarter & Woods, 1991), suggesting that the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM), which asks questions in real time (Durso et al, 1998), may be a better method (Chiappe et al, 2015;Vidulich & Tsang, 2015). Although we can debate various aspects of these approaches, the fact is there is quite a bit of data that help to address these questions.…”

Towards a Pluralistic Epistemology: Understanding Human-Technology Interactions in Shipping from Psychological, Sociological and Ecological Perspectives

“…Another notion that has drawn significant attention that is relative to the information processing paradigm is Situation Awareness (SA), which has an extensive use and theoretical discussion in maritime sectors, aviation industry, military training, teamwork, education and so on [88][89][90]. There are various definitions and explanations of SA terms and their orientation context [91][92][93], but Ensley's model has been the most widely referenced SA model to describe it as an operator's knowledge of the environment at a given point of time [74,75]. There are three levels of concept in her model, i.e., the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space (level 1 SA, perception), the comprehension of their meaning (level 2 SA, comprehension) and the projection of their status into the future (level 3 SA, projection/anticipation).…”

Unconstrained design: improving multitasking with in-vehicle information systems through enhanced situation awareness

“…Taking direction from (Lauber et al, 2014;Weinberg et al, 2011), input would be through the touchscreen and so a glance away from the road would still be required to complete the task. However, the glance required should be shorter due to the information provided, allowing the driver to anticipate what to do next (Chiappe et al, 2015). Traditionally the centre console IVIS is oriented vertically ( Figure 6).…”