The Effects of Operator Trust, Complacency Potential, and Task Complexity on Monitoring a Highly Reliable Automated System

<p>Technological advances have allowed for widespread implementation of automation in complex systems. However, the increase in quantity and complexity of advanced automated systems has raised a number of potential concerns including degraded monitoring skills. The present investigation consisted of two studies that assessed the impact of system reliability, complacency potential, monitoring complexity, operator trust, and system experience on monitoring performance. In both studies, participants monitored a simulated aviation display for failures while operating a manually controlled flight task. In addition, the second experiment assessed the ability of operators to detect a single automation failure over three experimental sessions. Results indicated that realistic levels of system reliability severely impaired an operator's ability to monitor effectively. In addition, as system experience increased, operator performance for monitoring highly reliable systems continued to decline. Further, operators who reported higher levels of trust, confidence, and more frequent usage of automation demonstrated poorer overall monitoring. The complexity of the monitoring task was also shown to be one of the most important factors influencing operator monitoring performance with poorer performance on more cognitively demanding tasks that continued to degrade as system experience increased. Results from both studies indicated that operator trust increased as a function of increasing system reliability and that as trust increased, monitoring performance decreased. These results suggest that for highly reliable systems, increasing task complexity and extensive experience may severely impair an operator's ability to monitor for unanticipated system states.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2004

Author dc:creator

• Bailey, Nathan R.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mark W. Scerbo
• James P. Bliss
• Peter J. Mikulka

• Automated system
• Complacency potential
• Monitoring
• Reliability
• Task complexity
• Trust
• Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• <p>In Copyright. URI: <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).</p>

Identifier

9780496939015

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.odu.edu:psychology_etds-1133