Examining the Relationship between Construction Workers’ Visual Attention and Situation Awareness under Fall and Tripping Hazard Conditions: Using Mobile Eye Tracking

Abstract

The risk of major occupational accidents involving tripping hazards is commonly underestimated with a large number of studies having been conducted to better understand variables that affect situation awareness: the ability to detect, perceive, and comprehend constantly evolving surroundings. An important property that affects situation awareness is the limited capacity of the attentional system. To maintain situation awareness while exposed to tripping hazards, a worker needs to obtain feedforward information about hazards, detect immediate tripping hazards, and visually scan surroundings for any potential environmental hazards. Despite the importance of situation awareness, its relationship with attention remains unknown in the construction industry. To fill this theoretical knowledge gap, this study examines differences in attentional allocation between workers with low and high situation awareness levels while exposed to tripping hazards in a real construction site. Participants were exposed to tripping hazards on a real jobsite while walking along a path in the presence of other workers. Situation awareness was measured using the situation awareness rating technique, and subjects' eye movements were tracked as direct measures of attention via a wearable mobile eye tracker. Investigating the attentional distribution of subjects by examining fixation-count heat maps and scan paths revealed that as workers with higher situation awareness walked, they periodically looked down and scanned ahead to remain fully aware of the environment and its associated hazards. Furthermore, this study quantitatively compared the differences between the eye-tracking metrics of worker with different situation awareness levels (low versus high) using permutation simulation. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that subjects did not allocate their attention equally to all hazardous areas of interest, and these differences in attentional distribution were modulated by the workers' level of situation awareness. This study advances theory by presenting one of the first attempts to use mobile eye-tracking technology to examine the role of cognitive processes (i.e., attention) in human error (i.e., failure to identify a hazard) and occupational accidents.

Role of Personality in Construction Safety: Investigating the Relationships between Personality, Attentional Failure, and Hazard Identification under Fall-Hazard Conditions

“…In the realm of construction safety research, attention is important because identifying hazardous situations is a complex and multidimensional cognitive process that requires the proper allocation of a workers' attention. As a result, eye tracking has been flourishing in studies related to construction safety (e.g., Dzeng et al 2016;Hasanzadeh et al 2016Hasanzadeh et al , 2017aHasanzadeh et al , 2018a because this tool serves as the most direct method for studying the attention of construction workers. Dzeng et al (2016) used a set of virtual images in an eyetracking experiment to study the impact of work experience on worker attention.…”

Possibilities of Neuroscience Application in Housing Development

“…Wearing an electroencephalography device Time, frequency, cortisol level ogy evaluates the influence of an independent variable, the stimulus, on dependent variables (eye movement indicators) (Hasanzadeh et al, 2016(Hasanzadeh et al, , 2018. This is a very popular neuroscience technique in market research.…”

“…It is used not only in market research but also in disciplines such as software design, website design, psychology, human behavior research, game design (Mohammadpour et al, 2015;Habibnezhad et al, 2016). The use of eye capture techniques to identify risks to construction workers in housing development is quite common (Habibnezhad et al, 2016;Hasanzadeh et al, 2016Hasanzadeh et al, , 2018. The popularity of this technique is probably due to the fact, that the subjects do not feel it, do not notice it, and their time is not wasted.…”

“…The eye capture technique uses mobile glasses or a stationary device with infrared cameras to determine where a person is directing their gaze (Tichy et al, 2012). According to Hasanzadeh et al (2018), near-infrared technology and high-resolution cameras are required to track the direction of corneal reflection and gaze. According to the authors, this technology enables researchers to continuously observe the points of view on a 2D screen or in a 3D environment.…”

“…Fixation is marked when the user's gaze is relatively immobile at a specific location, and movement is defined by rapid movement of the gaze from fixations to other elements (Mohammadpour et al, 2015). Hasanzadeh et al (2018) also recommend examining fixations (maintaining a relatively static eye position for 100-200 ms) and movement (sudden eye movement between fixation points). And although at first glance Mohammadpour et al (2015) and Hasanzadeh et al (2018) offer similar indicators, however, as detailed examination shows, the content of one of these indicators, specifically movement, is different.…”