The Impact of Information Integration in a Simulation of Future Submarine Command and Control

Abstract

Objective Examine the extent to which increasing information integration across displays in a simulated submarine command and control room can reduce operator workload, improve operator situation awareness, and improve team performance. Background In control rooms, the volume and number of sources of information are increasing, with the potential to overwhelm operator cognitive capacity. It is proposed that by distributing information to maximize relevance to each operator role (increasing information integration), it is possible to not only reduce operator workload but also improve situation awareness and team performance. Method Sixteen teams of six novice participants were trained to work together to combine data from multiple sensor displays to build a tactical picture of surrounding contacts at sea. The extent that data from one display were available to operators at other displays was manipulated (information integration) between teams. Team performance was assessed as the accuracy of the generated tactical picture. Results Teams built a more accurate tactical picture, and individual team members had better situation awareness and lower workload, when provided with high compared with low information integration. Conclusion A human-centered design approach to integrating information in command and control settings can result in lower workload, and enhanced situation awareness and team performance. Application The design of modern command and control rooms, in which operators must fuse increasing volumes of complex data from displays, may benefit from higher information integration based on a human-centered design philosophy, and a fundamental understanding of the cognitive work that is carried out by operators.

Neural and cognitive correlates of performance in dynamic multi-modal settings

“…Schematic of the TMA simulation (within CRUSE; Michailovs et al, 2021). (A) Left (top) and right (bottom) monitor contents during the simulation.…”

“…Contact position errors were weighted by the contact’s relative priority, a value based on the classification (i.e. warship, fishing vessel), range, course and behaviour (direct course or moving erratically; see Michailovs et al, 2021). The scenarios’ default solutions were included in the calculation of TPE (with all participants commencing the task with a TPE value of 17,500).…”

“…The dual-screen TMA task (see Figure 2A) within CRUSE (Michailovs et al, 2021) was the complex and dynamic cognitive task used in the current study. In the simulation, participants were required to integrate multiple sources of sensor information for each of the submarine's surrounding vessels (contacts) to develop its 'solution' (an estimate of its location and movement).…”

“…However, research is yet to examine the association between intrinsic oscillatory and aperiodic activity and fluctuations in cognitive processing on more naturalistic tasks over-time. Here, we examined how individual resting-state EEG activity – both oscillatory and aperiodic – relate to performance on a dynamic multi-modal cognitive task known as Target Motion Analysis (TMA) within the Control Room Use Simulation Environment (CRUSE; developed by Defence Science and Technology Group, see Michailovs et al, 2021). CRUSE is a medium-fidelity submarine control room simulation comprising multiple interoperable stations, including sensors (e.g.…”

Augmenting complex and dynamic performance through mindfulness-based cognitive training: an evaluation of training adherence, trait mindfulness, personality and resting-state EEG

“…Another issue in this literature is that demonstrated performance enhancements from mindfulness training have been limited to low dimensional cognitive tasks (i.e., Stroop Test, Trail Making Tests, Digit Span, Attentional Network Task [5, 8, 11, 95]), which raises questions about the extent to which cognitive gains from mindfulness training transfer to multifaceted, mutable tasks that are more representative of real-world performance situations. As such, the current study aims to extend these findings and assess the transferability of this cognitive training regime to more complex and dynamic environments using the Target Motion Analysis (TMA) task from the Control Room Use Simulation Environment (CRUSE [23]). The TMA task mimics the computerised console of a target motion analyst (responsible for estimating the movement of surrounding ships) within a submarine control room.…”