Physiological Measurements of Situation Awareness: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Objective The goal of this review is to investigate the relationship between indirect physiological measurements and direct measures of situation awareness (SA). Background Assessments of SA are often performed using techniques designed specifically to directly measure SA, such as SA global assessment technique (SAGAT), situation present assessment method (SPAM), and/or SA rating technique (SART). However, research suggests that physiological sensing methods may also be capable of inferring SA. Method Seven databases were searched. Eligibility criteria included human–subject experiments that used at least one direct SA assessment technique as well as at least one physiological measurement. Information extracted from each article were the physiological metric(s), direct SA measurement(s), correlation between these two metrics, and experimental task(s). Results Twenty-five articles were included in this review. Eye tracking techniques were the most commonly used physiological measures, and correlations between conscious aspects of eye movement measures and direct SA scores were observed. Evidence for cardiovascular predictors of SA was mixed. Only three electroencephalography (EEG) studies were identified, and their results suggest that EEG was sensitive to changes in SA. Overall, medium correlations were observed among the studies that reported a correlation coefficient between physiological and direct SA measures. Conclusion Reviewed studies observed relationships between a wide range of physiological measurements and direct assessments of SA. However, further investigations are needed to methodically collect more evidence. Application This review provides researchers and practitioners a summary of observed methods to indirectly assess SA with sensors and highlights research gaps to be addressed in future work.

Comparing the Visual Perception According to the Performance Using the Eye-Tracking Technology in High-Fidelity Simulation Settings

“…There is also a difference in gaze patterns depending on the knowledge level of the participant [ 33 , 34 ] as demonstrated in radiology, nursing, and dental education [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Cooper et al used eye-tracking technology in radiology where they showed CT-scan slices displaying different pathologies to participants at different levels of medical training.…”

Correction to: Multi-modal physiological sensing approach for distinguishing high workload events in remotely piloted aircraft simulation

“…Although not implemented in this current study, other physiological metrics may also be helpful in monitoring RPA operators. For example, galvanic skin response, muscle activity, pupil diameter, and thermal imaging were other pre-viously used physiological modalities (Charles and Nixon 2019; Wu et al 2021; T. Zhang et al 2021). However, the B-Alert system only had one extra channel (beyond the nine ch an ne ls us ed for E EG), an d w e s e l ec ted ECG f o r measurement.…”

“…Although work demonstrating the link between phys-iological metrics and constructs such as trust (Akash et al 2018;Dong et al 2015;Fu et al 2018;M. Wang et al 2018) and situation awareness (Catherwood et al 2014;Kaur et al 2019;Yeo et al 2017;Zhang et al 2021) is still developing, the ability of physiological sensors to measure workload has been well-established.…”

The Impact of Automation on Air Traffic Controller’s Behaviors

“…Few studies have shown that situation awareness can be inferred through EEG, event-related potential (ERP), heart rate variability (HRB), and skin conduction level (SCL) [31,32]. A recent review on the physiological measures of SA reports the general findings on the studies that investigated the correlations between physiological measures and situation awareness [33]. It was found that eye movements measures and EEG are commonly reported to have correlations with SA.…”