Detection of Icon Appearance and Disappearance on a Digital Situation Awareness Display

Abstract

The potential for change detection failure during the monitoring of a military digital situation awareness map was investigated. Participants were asked to monitor the map for icon appearance or disappearance. A change accompanied by two other changes was detected 69.3% of the time, while the same change occurring alone was detected 79.6% of the time. When three changes occurred simultaneously, all three were detected only 37% of the time. Detection of icon appearance was superior to detection of icon disappearance, as might be expected from the literature on visual attention. The discussion addresses the need to represent change explicitly in such systems and suggests properties that a change detection aid should possess.Military command and control is undergoing major transformation. The use of networked information processing tools is increasing, along with the employment of unmanned sensors. As these systems proliferate, direct observation will no longer MILITARY PSYCHOLOGY, 20:81-94, 2008

Effects of Action Video Game Experience on Change Detection

“…For the FBCB2 task, we replicated our previous findings concerning the effects of simultaneous changes (Durlach et al, 2008). And for the flicker task, we replicated our previous findings of differential sensitivity to the different change types (Neumann & Durlach, 2004).…”

“…The proportion of changes detected was analyzed according to group, number of simultaneous changes (one, two, or three), and change type (appearance or position). As we had found previously (Durlach et al, 2008), for any particular change, the likelihood that it was detected was affected by whether other changes occurred at the same time. These data are presented in Figure 4.…”

“…It displays a digital map with colored icons representing the positions of friendly, enemy, and other entities. We have shown in previous research that detection of changes in the situation awareness map of FBCB2 is prone to change blindness (detection failure) if the user is required to perform other functions with the system, such as sending text messages (Durlach & Chen 2003) or if multiple changes occur at the same time (Durlach et al, 2008). For the present experiment, participants were asked to monitor the digital map of FBCB2 and report any changes they observed in the icons.…”

“…On the other hand, it is well established that humans are generally poor at detecting changes in a visual display in the context of competing demands on attention (Durlach, 2004;Durlach & Chen, 2003;Durlach, Kring, & Bowens, 2008;Levin, Momen, Drivdahl, & Simons, 2002;Rensink, O'Regan, & Clarke, 2000). In fact, this is so well established that it has its own name: change blindness (e.g., O'Regan, Rensink, & Clark, 1999;Simons & Levin, 1997).…”

Supporting dynamic change detection: using the right tool for the task

“…CB has also been studied using dynamic visual scenes in more realistic contexts, such as simulated command and control (C2), security surveillance environments, and monitoring geospatial displays (e.g. DiVita, Obermayer, Nugent, & Linville, 2004; Durlach & Chen, 2003; Durlach, Kring, & Bowens, 2008; Stelzer & Wickens, 2006). In complex and dynamic situations, multiple independent objects in the scene are changing frequently, unpredictably, and sometimes simultaneously, making important visual changes difficult to process and detect (Durlach et al, 2008).…”